my joss paper

My joss paper is an exploration of the intricate, unseen connections between commerce, spirituality, the flow of goods and capital across borders. In Southeast Asian countries with significant Chinese diasporas, joss paper holds cultural and spiritual significance. Burned as an offering to ancestors or deities, the ritual reveals the region's syncretic spiritual landscape, where ancestral reverence and belief in the afterlife intersect with diverse religious practices. This work, an altered passport with carefully singed edges, sits at a threshold between worlds — where tangible and intangible meet, where material exchange ripple through spiritual planes. Here, the currency of global trade transcends its physical form, becoming an offering to forces governing the invisible.The burning of real currency in the pages of this passport invokes my own karmic consequences, echoing the ethical dimensions of trade and currency flows. My joss paper is an exploration of how rituals of trade and a personal pursuit of prosperity are intertwined with deeper spiritual and karmic implications — how these exchanges, while vital to the flow of goods and capital, also carry an invisible weight felt long after transactions are complete.
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