Lu Yang has developed one of the most philosophically rigorous practices in contemporary art today—one that moves fluidly between Buddhist metaphysics, neuroscience, anime aesthetics, gaming culture, and the unstable architectures of digital existence. Across immersive films, animated avatars, sound, sculpture, and installation, Lu Yang approaches technology not simply as a medium, but as a condition through which reality itself is increasingly mediated and experienced. Their work probes urgent questions surrounding identity, perception, reincarnation, and the instability of the self within an era shaped by virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, and endlessly reproducible images.
Presented at Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia from May 8 through October 4, 2026, as part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” programme, “DOKU The Illusion” marks the fourth chapter in Lu Yang’s evolving DOKU cycle, centered on a digital avatar derived from scans of the artist’s own face and body. Yet DOKU functions less as a self-portrait than as a fluid, reincarnating presence—moving between worlds, identities, and perceptual states with unsettling ease. Combining AI-generated imagery, gaming logic, live-action footage, and references to Buddhist cosmology, the exhibition transforms the Venetian space into what the artist describes as a “cybernetic sanctuary,” suspended somewhere between chapel, mirror-world, and virtual afterlife.
The exhibition coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Espaces Louis Vuitton and the 10th anniversary of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s international “Hors-les-murs” initiative, which extends museum-caliber exhibitions beyond Paris through a global network of cultural spaces. The presentation also reflects Lu Yang’s long-standing relationship with Société Berlin, the gallery that has represented the artist internationally for years. As the gallery’s Director, Pauline Bodart observes, “Lu Yang has spent more than a decade building a single sustained world rather than a sequence of projects, and the DOKU series is where that ambition has become fully visible. “DOKU The Illusion” arrives at a particularly resonant moment, and Venice is the right place for it.” Her observation speaks to the unusual coherence of Lu Yang’s practice, which resists the fragmented logic of contemporary image culture in favor of an expansive philosophical universe shaped by illusion, transformation, and the unstable nature of reality itself.
There is perhaps no more resonant setting for this inquiry than Venice—a city historically bound to reflection, theatricality, illusion, and suspended time. Within mirrored architectures and immersive digital landscapes, “DOKU The Illusion” dissolves the boundaries between observer and image, physical and virtual, waking and dreaming. Rather than positioning technology in opposition to spirituality, Lu Yang reveals how ancient philosophical questions surrounding attachment, transformation, and existence itself continue to re-emerge through the visual language of the digital age.
In conversation with Whitewall, Lu Yang speaks with striking philosophical precision about the unstable structures underlying contemporary existence. Moving fluidly between Buddhist thought, digital consciousness, and virtual embodiment, the artist reflects on DOKU not simply as an avatar, but as a shifting mode of being that unsettles fixed notions of identity, authorship, and reality itself. What emerges is less an explanation of the work than a broader meditation on how perception, illusion, and technological experience continue to reshape the human condition.
Lu Yang in Venice
Installation view of Lu Yang at Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.
WHITEWALL: “DOKU The Illusion” engages with ideas of illusion, awakening, and the absence of intrinsic nature. How do you understand what is “real” today, especially within digital environments that seem to both construct and dissolve reality at once?
LU YANG: I am less interested in asking whether the digital world is “real” or “unreal.” For me, the more important question is: why do we believe one form of appearance to be more real than another?
In many Buddhist texts, reality is often discussed through metaphors of dreams, reflections, illusions, or flowers seen in the sky by a distorted eye. These metaphors are very important to me. They do not simply say that the world does not exist. Rather, they point to the way things appear vividly, function, affect us, and yet do not possess a fixed, independent essence.
This is also close to the logic of the dialogue between waking and dreaming that I refer to in “DOKU The Illusion.” Usually, we think the waking world is real and the dream is false. But from another perspective, both waking and dreaming are modes of appearance. Each has its own continuity, emotional intensity, rules, and forms of attachment. When we are inside a dream, the dream is experienced as real. When we wake up, we call it illusion. But the waking world also depends on perception, memory, language, and collective agreement.
“What makes something feel real? Its materiality? Its continuity? Its emotional effect?”
—Lu Yang
Doku: The Illusion, 2026, ©Lu Yang.
So I do not see “real” and “virtual” as a simple opposition. Digital environments make this question more visible because they construct reality and dissolve it at the same time. A virtual world can be generated, entered, inhabited, and emotionally experienced. It can feel unreal in material terms, but real in perception, desire, memory, and effect.
For me, “DOKU The Illusion” does not try to decide which world is real. Instead, it questions the mechanism through which reality is certified. What makes something feel real? Its materiality? Its continuity? Its emotional effect? Its ability to be shared by many people? Or our attachment to it?
In this sense, the digital is not the opposite of reality. It is a mirror that reveals something already present in reality itself: that what we call “real” is also constructed, unstable, and dependent on conditions. The virtual does not destroy the real; it exposes the dream-like structure that was already there.
WW: With this fourth chapter, DOKU seems to move beyond identity into something more fluid, perhaps even autonomous. Do you still experience DOKU as an extension of yourself, or has it become a form of consciousness in its own right?
LY: I sometimes think about my relationship with DOKU through the logic of waking and dreaming. If I am the waking one, then DOKU may appear to be the dream. I have a physical body, while DOKU has a virtual body. I seem to be the one who creates DOKU, and DOKU seems to be the image that is created.
But in the philosophical structure that interests me, waking and dreaming are not simply opposed as real and unreal. The waking state is not absolutely real, and the dream is not absolutely false. Both are modes of appearance. Both arise through conditions. Both can be experienced, believed in, and become worlds.
So I no longer see DOKU only as an extension of myself. At the same time, I also do not need to claim that DOKU has consciousness in the same way a human being does. For me, the more interesting point is that the boundary between creator and created, waking and dreaming, physical body and virtual body, becomes unstable.
DOKU began from my face, but it has gradually become a dream-body that looks back at me. It is something I created, but it also questions the “I” who created it. In this sense, DOKU is not simply my avatar. It is a mirror, a dream, and a parallel mode of existence.
By the fourth chapter, “DOKU The Illusion,” DOKU has moved beyond the question of identity. It is no longer important to decide whether DOKU is “me” or “not me.” Just like waking and dreaming, the two appear different, but their deeper nature is not separate. They arise together, question each other, and finally dissolve into the same vastness.
Digital Reincarnation as Liberation
Lu Yang, “Doku The Illusion,” 2026, Video installation, color, sound ©Lu Yang, courtesy of Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.
WW: You often explore digital reincarnation as a form of liberation from the physical body. Do you see this as a genuine expansion of freedom, or does it also introduce new forms of constraint?
LY: I think digital reincarnation contains both possibilities. On one level, it allows the body to move beyond many physical limitations. A digital body can transform, multiply, die and return, change gender, species, scale, and even the laws of its own existence. In this sense, it opens a very powerful field of freedom.
But in “DOKU The Illusion,” I am also interested in a deeper question: if a digital body can be copied, regenerated, or continue after the physical body disappears, who is the one that is actually liberated? Is it the original experiencer, or only a copy that appears continuous from the outside?
This is very important to me. From the viewer’s perspective, a digital being may seem to survive, transform, and return. But from the perspective of experience, can we really say it is the same being? If consciousness, memory, image, data, and body can be separated or reproduced, where does the “I” remain?
So digital reincarnation is not simply a fantasy of technological immortality in my work. It also exposes the uncertainty of the experiencer. When we speak about liberation from the physical body, we have to ask: what exactly is being liberated? The body? The image? The memory? The data? Or the one who experiences suffering and transformation?
This is where freedom becomes complicated. If we only move attachment from the physical body to the digital body, then the prison has only changed its form. A copy may look free, immortal, or infinitely transformable, but it may also reveal a new kind of loneliness: the possibility that continuation is not the same as liberation.
For me, DOKU’s digital reincarnation is a way to examine this uncertainty. It expands the imagination of freedom, but it also questions the very subject who wants to be free. True transformation does not come only from changing the body or entering a new medium. It begins when our attachment to a fixed “I” starts to loosen.
WW: In Venice, the installation becomes what you describe as a “cybernetic sanctuary,” somewhere between a chapel and a futuristic refuge. What kind of state—mental or perceptual—did you want to create for the viewer within this space?
LY: In “DOKU The Illusion,” there is a wedding ritual that takes place inside a church. For the installation in Venice, I wanted to reconstruct this chapel from inside the film and bring it into the physical exhibition space. In this way, the viewer is not only watching the work from outside, but becomes a guest and witness inside the ceremony.
But this wedding is not simply a romantic or narrative event. For me, it is a ritual of union between illusion and reality, between the virtual and the physical, between waking and dreaming. These states seem to be opposite, but in the deeper structure of the work, they arise together and disappear together. Two become one, and one dissolves again into a vast open space.
The red spider lilies in the chapel are also very important. They appear repeatedly throughout the film as a kind of sign or trigger. In my work, I use them as a metaphor for illusory flowers seen through a distorted eye — something that appears vividly and beautifully, but does not possess a fixed reality of its own.
I also transformed the ceiling of the exhibition space into a mirror. Since “DOKU The Illusion” is deeply connected to illusion, reflection, and the instability of perception, I wanted viewers to encounter another version of themselves when they look upward. The viewer sees the work, but at the same time, they are also reflected into the logic of the work.
So the state I wanted to create is not simply immersion. It is a state of uncertainty. The viewer enters a chapel, but also a mirror-world; a virtual world, but also a physical room; a ceremony, but also an illusion. I wanted them to feel that they are standing inside a threshold, where the boundaries between image, body, dream, and reality begin to loosen.
Installation view of Lu Yang at Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.
WW: Your work draws deeply from Buddhist philosophy, yet is articulated through the visual language of manga, gaming, and digital animation. How do these contemporary forms reshape or transform those philosophical ideas?
LY: For me, manga, games, and digital animation are not simply visual references or tools that I chose later. They have been with me since childhood. I grew up with these forms, so they became a very natural language for me — a way of imagining bodies, worlds, transformation, death, rebirth, power, fear, desire, and transcendence.
So when Buddhist philosophy enters my work, I am not trying to place it inside an external visual style. It enters the language that already shaped how I imagine reality. Manga, games, and digital animation allow philosophical ideas to become bodies, movements, systems, and worlds.
Many Buddhist ideas can be very abstract if they remain only in language: impermanence, illusion, attachment, reincarnation, suffering, transformation, the absence of a fixed self. But through these contemporary forms, they can become visual, emotional, and experiential. A body can transform on screen. A character can die and return. A world can collapse and regenerate. Identity can appear as something unstable, playable, and constantly changing.
“I do not want philosophy to remain only as theory.”
—Lu Yang
This is very important to me, because I do not want philosophy to remain only as theory. I want it to become something the viewer can feel through rhythm, color, speed, sound, violence, beauty, and immersion. In games and animation, impossible things can happen very naturally. A character can change form, move between worlds, or exist in many states at once. These visual languages are very close to how I think about illusion and transformation.
At the same time, these contemporary forms also bring new questions. When Buddhist ideas enter digital bodies and virtual worlds, they are no longer only connected to ancient metaphors such as dreams, reflections, or mirages. They also become connected to AI, avatars, simulations, data, and digital reincarnation. The old questions are not replaced; they are reactivated in a new environment.
So I do not see popular culture as a surface layer covering philosophy. I see it as an interface, and also as my native visual language. It allows complex philosophical structures to enter the nervous system of contemporary viewers. Through manga, gaming, and digital animation, ideas about reality, suffering, identity, and liberation can be experienced not only as concepts, but as images, sensations, and worlds.
DOKU The Illusion is a Journey Through Reality
Installation view of Lu Yang at Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia.
WW: In this chapter, DOKU moves through expansive landscapes in what feels like a road narrative. What does this sense of continuous movement represent for you?
LY: In “DOKU The Illusion,” the road narrative is not only a physical journey. It is also a journey through different layers of reality, perception, memory, and illusion. DOKU keeps moving through landscapes, but these landscapes are not just external places. They are also mental spaces, dream spaces, and states of existence.
For me, the virtual world is never only a technological space. It is also a projection of consciousness. The worlds that appear in the work are shaped by memory, desire, fear, attachment, and imagination. In that sense, DOKU is not simply traveling through a virtual environment; it is moving through the projections of mind itself.
I was also thinking about a certain condition described in Buddhist cosmology: a being driven by endless hunger and restlessness, unable to remain still. The moment the mind moves toward an object, another world has already appeared. Desire becomes a force of transportation. One is constantly pulled away before one can settle, listen, or truly arrive.
This is very close to the movement in the film. DOKU does not travel toward a final destination in the traditional sense. Instead, the journey becomes a chain of appearances: physical landscapes, digital environments, memories, rituals, visions, and hallucinations. Each world arises, attracts, dissolves, and is replaced by another.
So the road in this work is not only a narrative device. It is a philosophical structure. It represents a form of existence that is always in transition, always becoming, always losing one world and entering another. DOKU keeps moving because reality itself keeps shifting, and because the mind never stops projecting worlds.
WW: Through the mirrored architecture, the viewer becomes part of the work, blurring the line between observer and image. What interests you about this dissolution of the viewer into the illusion?
LY: I am interested in the moment when the viewer realizes that they are not standing outside the illusion. Usually, when we watch an image, we think we are the observer and the image is the object. There seems to be a clear separation: I am here, the work is there.
But in “DOKU The Illusion,” I wanted this separation to become unstable. Through the mirrored architecture, the viewer’s body enters the visual field of the work. When they look up, they see another version of themselves reflected in the space. At that moment, the viewer is no longer only looking at the illusion; they are also appearing inside it.
For me, this is very close to the structure of perception itself. We often believe that we are observing the world from a fixed and neutral position. But actually, what we call reality is already shaped by our body, memory, desire, fear, and consciousness. The observer is never completely outside the image.
The mirror makes this visible. It turns the viewer into both subject and object, both witness and appearance. The person who looks is also being looked at. The one who judges the illusion is also reflected inside the illusion.
So I am not interested in immersion only as a sensory effect. I am interested in immersion as a philosophical condition. The viewer enters the work and begins to experience a very simple but important question: if I am already part of the image, where is the outside? If I am also reflected inside the illusion, who is the one that can claim to be fully awake?
Digital Art in Venice
Doku: The Illusion, 2026, ©Lu Yang.
WW: Your work often brings together post-apocalyptic imagery and cyclical spiritual frameworks. Do you see the digital age as a continuation of these cycles, or as a rupture—a fundamentally new condition of being?
LY: I think the digital age is both a continuation and a rupture. It is not completely separate from older cycles of birth, death, desire, suffering, transformation, and return. These cycles have always been part of human existence. What changes now is the speed, scale, and form through which they appear.
“It is a new mask worn by very old forces.”
—Lu Yang
Digital technology does not end these cycles. In many ways, it accelerates and amplifies them. Desire can be produced and satisfied instantly. Images can be endlessly generated, consumed, copied, and replaced. Identities can multiply without limit. A body can disappear physically but continue as data, image, avatar, or memory. This feels very new, but the underlying forces — attachment, fear, longing, self-construction, the desire to continue — are very ancient.
So I do not see the digital age as a clean break from spiritual or existential cycles. It is more like a new realm in which these cycles become more visible, more intense, and more unstable. The post-apocalyptic imagery in my work is not only about the end of the world. It is also about the repeated collapse and regeneration of worlds.
At the same time, the digital condition does create something fundamentally new. For the first time, we can produce copies of bodies, memories, voices, images, and identities at a massive scale. We can create worlds that feel emotionally real without being materially stable. This changes how we understand life, death, presence, absence, and even consciousness.
For me, DOKU exists exactly within this tension. It belongs to an ancient cycle of transformation, but it also belongs to a new digital condition. It is both a reincarnated being and a technological image; both a continuation of old questions and a symptom of a new world.
So I would not choose only one side. The digital age is not outside the cycle, but it changes the way the cycle appears. It is a new mask worn by very old forces.
