電音禪境 (Zen Temple of Techno), Du Kun (born 1981)

This painting depicts Julia Govor (see image below), a Russian-born electronic musician who got her start performing in a small military town in Abkhazia. Since moving to New York City a few years ago, she has emerged as an innovative force of electro/experimental techno. According to the website Mixcloud, at the core of her live performance is “an ever-present element of emotional truth and a quest to redefine her audience’s relationship with beat.” Like other large-scale portraits in this series, Du Kun intentionally deifies cutting-edge musicians as architectonic embodiments of East Asian religious temples and grottoes as a way of combining his deep love of contemporary music with his spiritual life.