Bone Ash Apartments, 2026, The Transart Foundation of Art and Anthropology, Houston, TX
This exhibition was presentation in natural light alongside the outcome of the workshop (drawings), Object as Medium. The work is informed by conversations and collaborations at the American Anthropology Association Ghost Conference, particularly around an emerging and complex issue where cremated remains are housed in private apartments as a substitute for cemeteries in East Asia.
I hosted Object as Medium, which was a discussion-based workshop on the laws of spirit mediumship and divination practices accepted / unaccepted by the National Spiritualist Association. This discussion covered ethics and bias from practices of divination or communing with the dead for both the medium as well as the observer. This workshop illustrates a variety of relationships between seeking and receiving answers, covering the implications of emotional readings and bereavement. The workshop’s objective expanded upon relational listening, intersubjective exchange, and deepened knowledge on contemporary practices. The object is the tool in which the workshop operates. An unfixed symbolic object will be used as a medium to decipher the implied rules and balances that occur. These exercises connected the participant to materialist visual practices. The objective offered new perspectives on understanding the relationship to divination within the subjecthood.
divination object used for the workshop
