Fluid Boundaries: Textile Borders in Cave 112 of the Mogao Caves

This paper argues that the painted textile borders framing the murals of Dunhuang’s Cave 112 from the Middle Tang period (c.756–835 CE) help to conceptualize the immovable space as fluid and movable space. While often overlooked as merely decorative, these painted borders evoke the presence of actual textiles, creating the effect of painted surfaces that are not fixed but flexible and dynamic. The rock-cut space allows for movement between material and immaterial realms, while representing Buddhist concepts of embodied space, such as Pure Lands and visionary landscapes.

By examining the patterns of the borders of wall paintings, extant textile fragments, and portable painting examples from Cave 17, widely known as the Library Cave, this study highlights the mutual conceptualization of painted and portable media. The materiality of portable paintings—movable, flexible, and intimate—was transferred to the immovable cave wall, effectively transforming the enclosed cave into a “conceptual movable space.” Within this framework, the cave interior becomes a more dynamic and flexible space for practitioners to engage in active meditation or visualization practices.

This paper contributes to current scholarship that foregrounds Buddhist cave temples not only as fixed architectural spaces but as dynamic environments oriented by practitioners’ own experiences. By reevaluating painted textile borders as visual agents of spatial organization rather than mere ornament, I will shed new light on how painters at Dunhuang utilized familiar materials, such as textiles, to give more tangible form to the spatial fluidity of sacred space.