丽杉 (Li Shan)
2024. Digital photographs of performance in Tompkins Square Park.
Li Shan is a performance piece, wherein I burnt Joss paper money, a photograph of myself wearing a Western princess dress and tiara from 2007, incense, and a tangerine in Tompkins Square Park. Joss paper refers to the sheets of paper made into burnt offerings common in Chinese ancestral worship to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has sufficient means in the afterlife. It is a multi-million dollar enterprise: in Taiwan alone, the annual revenue that temples received from burning joss paper was US $400 million (NT$13 billion) as of 2014. As an American raised Christian, this rite was considered taboo and Pagan growing up, though I saw many Buddhist and secular family friends hold their own shrines for ancestors. This piece was about pantomiming traditional movements, a generation removed, and performing an offering to a younger self. The title refers to my full Chinese name, Xia Li Shan (夏丽杉), which translates to a Summer pine mountain — a fir, its branches holding on for leverage between the limestone of Karst mountains, dappled sunlight shining on the green needles amongst clouds and steep spires of the country. Chinese naming convention tends to revolve around images: they’re poetic. This is a gesture at that poetry, at the alienation of studying my own culture from a layer of removal, destruction and homage. It’s play-acting a version of myself, my parents, and my family.