Burn to Ashes

Origami experiement

I picked up the origami skill my mom used to teach me when I was a kid for making paper offerings for Taoist rituals. It reminds me of the intimacy between paper and the other world, through fire, it can be transported between the worlds of the living and the dead. Paper strongly carries the meaning on which is projected.  In Chinese social and familial contexts, doing origami, even for ancestors, is seen as girly and feminine and should be handled by girls and women in the household. Paper is strong but fragile at the same time. As a queer, I oscillate between these feelings. In this ongoing series of origami experiments, I try to question the divisions between strong and fragile, tangible and intangible, feminine and masculine.