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Thua Thien Hue

Incense, ink, and pen on paper

In the first musing of this project, I explore the ways by which we tether ourselves to the world. I sit with a childhood memory of my grandmother, who each evening lit a stick of incense clasped firmly between her hands and recited "Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật" (Homage to Amitābha Buddha) before a photograph of her late husband. Through this memory, I engage with Devotion and the Buddhist principles of death, rebirth, and liberation. The sequence of gestures that animated my grandmother's daily ritual—the lighting of incense, the recitation, and the erosion of the incense with time—is interpreted through a Hegelian lens as an unfolding of faith and a reminder of the transience of being. Sonic motifs from the mantra are realized as visual glyphs, assigning form and body to the ephemeral.

What color is the sacred?

Oil based ink, pen, and pastel on paper

A meditation on Michael Taussig's What color is the sacred and discourse on the colonial histories of color, the sex appeal of the inorganic, and the instrument of ethnographic observation.