Lu Yang develops an interdisciplinary practice that combines 3D animation, immersive game installations, performance, and media art, raising central questions about the body, consciousness, technology, and spirituality. Through a non-binary digital avatar (DOKU), Lu Yang explores themes such as death, gender fluidity, and neuroscience, intertwining Buddhist philosophy with anime aesthetics and pop-cultural symbols. In doing so, they create hybrid experiential spaces that intertwine real and virtual existence.
“DOKU The Flow” (2024) is the second chapter in Lu Yang’s ongoing DOKU video series, a roughly 50-minute 3D-animated film created with Unreal Engine in ultra-high definition. It centers on the artist’s non-binary, genderless digital avatar DOKU, whose face is modeled after Lu Yang and whose name derives from the Japanese Buddhist phrase dokusho dokushi (“we are born alone, and we die alone”).
The work explores the fluidity and ultimate dissolution of the self through Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, particularly the concepts of samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth), emptiness, and non-dualism. DOKU shifts between “skins” representing the six realms of existence (Human, Asura, Heaven, Hell, Animal, Hungry Ghost), depicted as stylized, anime- and game-inspired superheroes with circuitry tattoos and motion-captured traditional dance elements.
A key narrative arc sees DOKU boarding a surreal cruise ship called “The Desire”, which satirically fulfills the five great desires (hunger, wealth, sleep, fame, and sensuality). This traps the avatar in material illusions and external validation as false escapes from suffering. Memorable scenes include a naked DOKU ripping open its chest to reveal a miniature self inside, referencing the Ramayana and the idea that “the creator and the created are each other.”
Blending neuroscience-inspired imagery, pop culture, and spiritual motifs, the non-linear, dreamlike film portrays the self as omnipresent, fluid, and ultimately dissolving into the universe rather than achieving a fixed identity. In the Julia Stoschek Foundation’s 2026 exhibition “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem” at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles, it was presented as a visually spectacular highlight, probing the boundaries between real and virtual existence, body and consciousness, technology and spirituality.
Lu Yang, DOKU The Flow, 2024, HD video, 50’15”, color, sound. What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem” at the Variety Arts Theater in Los Angeles. February 18, 2026.
