Several different teams of people helped maintain the exhibition, many of them artists, and to me the fact that they all took to the work so easily was the key to understanding Laib s philosophy that art should be an ongoing, participatory process. I read his work as a paean to nature and spirituality. The artist earned a degree in medicine, then rejected the profession because he felt it overemphasized the study of the body and ignored the soul. With his shaved head, slight figure and the saffron robes he sometimes wears, his connection to Eastern religions is obvious. Buddhists and Hindus revere milk as a basic nurturing substance and ritualistically pour it over temple sculptures.
Rice is considered a staple food around the world.
In many Eastern cultures it is also a shrine offering. And the purity of its whiteness and its simple shape are elegant design elements. Some see the piles of rice as crowds of miniature people swarming around the little wax houses. Pollen, to Laib, is another symbol of a pure, elemental substance of nature. But that glowing patch of hazelnut pollen that I saw at the Hirshhorn eventually had to be removed from the floor, rather unceremoniously, with a spatula and a brush once the show closed.