The Impact of Hyphenation in Wasps

'It is (the) suspicion around otherness and identification that I'm exploring in these images. A Bodhisattva covered by a condom is still a Bodhisattva, but we can only see it through a filmy yellow shield. It is the perception, therefore, that is flawed and distorted, while the Bodhisattva statue--and subsequently, its reverent value to Buddhists--is unchanged. Similarly, a wasp that is connected surgically to a Buddha is still distinct as a wasp. The wasps may come to the Buddha in groups, or individually; the Buddha may appear to be sheltering it, and it may appear to be whispering to the Buddha. It can't escape its wasp nature, no matter how many pins are run through it and no matter how inseparable it may be from that Buddha (or Buddhism). But if its wasp nature is both its zero-point and its complete potential, then its identification with the Buddha can be neither genuine nor insincere, because it does not inhabit a binary universe--there is only 'wasp.' —from 'Appropriate Buddha' by David Garneau and Lee Henderson; BlackFlash Magazine, September, 2007