Abstract

The launch of the hit game, “Black Myth: Wukong,” in August 2024 has sparked renewed interests in the many historical sites that inspired its stunning visuals. In fact, the role that players take on in the game—an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural abilities—also has many previous incarnations in the history of Chinese and East Asian art at large. The most well-known is perhaps the Monkey King Sun Wukong, from Wu Chengen’s monumental sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. Yet Wu’s Journey to the West was only one of the converging points that brought together visual and textual sources dating back to the Han dynasty. Harvard Visual China’s 2025 Graduate Symposium presents two panels on the topic of Art of Journeys—From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong.

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This symposium is generously co-sponsored by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Innovation Fund of the Department of History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University, Harvard FAS CAMLab (Chinese Media Lab), and the Yin-Cheng Distinguished Lecture Series on Buddhism.

Event Location

Lower Level Auditorium, 485 Broadway, Harvard University

Event Organizer

Harvard Visual China

Harvard Visual China (HVC) is a student organization at Harvard University dedicated to the study of Chinese art and culture.