Two Wild Geese 

"Two Wild Geese" is a painting made with ink on paper by Bada Shanren, a man who lived through immense cultural upheaval. Born Zhu Da, he was a descendent of the Ming Dynasty's imperial family. After the fall of the Ming in 1644, Zhu Da became a Buddhist monk, and later took the name Bada Shanren as an expression of his grief and displacement. In this painting, we see two geese perched on a rock, gazing upwards into a vast, empty sky. Birds were a recurring motif for Bada Shanren, acting as stand-ins for human emotions and experiences. Given his background, it's difficult not to see these geese as symbols of the artist himself, forever looking towards a lost past. He once said, “my paintings are like me, born of a lost kingdom”. Here, the personal and political converge, a testament to the resilience of identity in the face of historical trauma.