Religion may be the most solid border, and perhaps most difficult to cross. The explicit humor of Peng Hong-Chih’s Canine Monk series challenges viewers of different faiths, with the artist’s dog cast as creative subject of the pious autoportrait. In 10 Commandments and Islamic Exegesis, Peng’s dog writes classic religious scripture onto the wall with its tongue, an active co-producer of the performance piece. Peng has described the making of this work: “…I first used oil to paint the scripture on the wall, and then applied dog food to the text so my dog would eat it. On the video playback, the dog is thus transformed from mere animal to artist. At this moment, another thematic ‘rewind’ becomes apparent: ‘dog’ spells ‘God’ in reverse. In this work, man’s most loyal yet inferior partner, the dog, inhabits a contradictory moralistic role as religious advocate.”
A two-channel video projection, Peng’s dog outlines the Ten Commandments in Hebrew on the left side of the installation, and writes nearly identical scriptural quotations excerpted from the Koran in English on the right. Western viewers may automatically identify with the writing from the Koran – further challenging simplistic misconceptions of the Muslim faith today. The humble dog-as-alter-ego here replaces the body of the artist to mediate between humans who don’t get along.

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