Wabi Sabi from the balcony
Conceptual photography project about life under quarantine due to COVID-19.
What is Wabi Sabi?
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.
Wabi-sabi is a composite of two interrelated aesthetic concepts, wabi and sabi . According to theStanford Enciclopedia of Philosophy, wabi may be translated as "subdued, austere beauty," while sabi means "rustic patina." Wabi-sabi is derived from the Budhistteaching of the three marks of existence(三法印, sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常, mujō), suffering (苦, ku) and emptiness or absence of self nature.
Wabi and sabi both suggest sentiments of desolation and solitude. In the Mahayana Budhist view of the universe, these may be viewed as positive characteristics, representing liberation from a material world and transcendence to a simpler life. Since Mahayana philosophy predicates that genuine understanding is reached through experience rather than words, wabi-sabi may best be appreciated non-verbally.
At first, something that exhibited wabi-sabi qualities could only be discovered; it could be "found in the simple dwellings of the farmers that dotted the landscape, epitomized in neglected stone lanterns overgrown with moss or in simple bowls and other household utensils used by the common folk." However, towards the end of the late medieval period, the ruling class began using these aesthetic values to intentionally create "tea ceremony utensils, handicrafts, tea ceremony rooms and cottages, homes, gardens, even food and sweets, and above all manners and etiquette."
