required by sorrow
"Those who remain are put to work. They…are initiated in the ethology of those who are no more, and to ways of welcoming them.“
– Vinciane Despret
This body of work came to be after my paternal grandmother’s retirement from physical form, as a way to grieve through art — an enigmatic, embodied practice I know and live by. I founded ‘Baibai Research Group’ (BBRG), a transdisciplinary art platform operating at the intersections of spirituality, ancestry and relationality. BBRG attends to larger discourses from an intimate starting point of a grandchild —at once grieving and curious— looking for her lost grandparent. I wanted to continue my collaboration with her in death; it felt like the most natural thing to do. My “sorrow…require(d) me” (Despret). I am still answering.
In allowing myself to be porous, I have been guided to experiences hitherto unthinkable, that birthed these works, which can be said to be in collaboration with the departed. These experiences include: prolonging my late grandmother’s existence by rubbing her personal belongings (including the compression socks from her deathbed) on bread to grow mould, which led to grandma mould hankies; my ongoing relationship with historic Chinese religious goods merchant Ban Kah Hiang in Singapore, which led to meeting Jaria Ramakisoon from Trinidad and Tobago, a multi religious man passionate about Chinese ancestor worship, who made YouTube videos in response to my work; being gifted a bottle of Dream-Inspired Millet Wine by Taiwanese artist Po-Chih Huang – who received the wine from an Indigenous chief and collaborator Dawan Katjadrepan, which led to a dream visitation from my great grandmother revealing ingredients that I used to make Dream Visitation Candy. Another main development was the creation of the “Ancestor Dream Visitation Repository”, a research experiment collecting, theorizing and translating ancestor dream visitations towards new notions of lineage, remembrance and spirituality for the living descendant / future ancestor.
In welcoming my dead to be “engaged in a joint transformative process with the living” (Magali Molinié), I cultivate my grief. Through an unfolding of my deeply personal, divinatory process, this body of work opens portals between realms that reimagine ancestral connection and our relationship with the departed, while reinventing and resituating spiritual practices within new models of grief whispering a continued becoming-together.
required by sorrow is an installation consisting of “Dream Visitation Temple: grandma mould 托夢殿：奶奶霉菌” (2024) with “Dream Visitation Candy (dream visitation #49) 托夢糖 (托夢#49)” (2024) and the handkerchiefs “Weeping Together / Grandma Mould Hankies 一起哭 / 奶奶霉菌手帕” (2024) as well as the video work “1955-2023” (2023), the poster “Baibai Basics 拜拜基礎” (2022) and the video series “Ancestor Money Explained by Jaria Ramakisoon” (2023).
documentation coming soon
