IMAGO DEI – Bearing His Image

An Ongoing Participatory Art Project on Creation, Human Life, Identity, and Renewal

Initiated by Xieda Wang & Chuyun Liu  |  AMOMOS

IMAGO DEI – Bearing His Image | China, 2026.

About the Project

IMAGO DEI – Bearing His Image is an ongoing participatory art project initiated by artists Xieda Wang and Chuyun Liu, rooted in the biblical revelation that every human being is created in the image of God.

We believe that human beings possess dignity because they bear God’s image, and that the capacities to perceive, imagine, create, and respond belong to our created humanity. Yet we do not encounter ourselves or the world from a neutral position. Culture, family, personal experience, social expectations, and habitual ways of thinking all shape how we see, judge, and understand ourselves—often without our realizing it.

Through artistic practice, IMAGO DEI enters these lived human experiences and brings them into the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and renewal. The project asks: Who are we? How do we come to understand ourselves, others, and the world? What does it mean to bear the image of God today?

Artistic Practice and Reflection

IMAGO DEI takes genuine artistic learning and growth seriously. We believe artistic capacity is a gift of our created humanity and deserves careful cultivation through attentive learning, practice, and guidance. The project therefore brings together professionally designed art instruction, participatory artistic practice, and carefully guided reflection.

Participants are invited not only to express what they already feel or know, but also to develop new capacities for perception, observation, understanding, drawing, and response. Artistic experience opens a pathway into theological reflection rooted in Scripture and shaped and guided by the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and renewal in Christ.

Artistic learning and participatory practice within IMAGO DEI.

A Three-Part Artistic Journey

The project unfolds through three interconnected artistic practices. The first interrupts habitual ways of seeing and judging, allowing patterns that often remain unnoticed to come into view. From this disruption, participants begin to relearn attention and turn outward toward God’s created world.

The second moves into deeper professional artistic learning. As participants develop capacities for observation, structural understanding, and drawing, they also encounter human life through growth, change, aging, time, finitude, and eternity.

The third brings together capacities developed through the earlier practices and returns to the self through self-portraiture. Participants reconsider the question of identity in the light of Scripture and of what it means to continue bearing God’s image and to be renewed in Christ.

Guided sharing and reflection are integrated with the artistic process.

An Evolving Participatory Artwork

IMAGO DEI does not end when a gathering concludes. With participants’ permission, artworks, images, and stories emerging from different communities are documented and gradually brought together through the project website, digital presentations, photo walls, exhibitions, and other public forms.

Faces, works, and stories from different ages, cultures, and life experiences become part of an evolving shared artwork. Individual acts of seeing and making are gathered around a continuing question: What does it mean to bear the image of God?

Launched in China in 2026, IMAGO DEI is being prepared for its U.S. launch in 2027. Depending on the context and partner community, the project may take the form of art retreats, workshops, participatory art, exhibitions, and public presentations.

Invite & Collaborate

We welcome conversations with churches, schools, arts and cultural organizations, communities, and other partners interested in hosting or developing IMAGO DEI in their own context.

More detailed project materials are available for prospective partners who would like to explore a collaboration with us.