Letter to Love(d) Ones Series
 

Ash from Lunar New Year offerings transcends its ritual origin to explore language, memory, and the unsaid. Each mark begins with ash gathered after the fire has quieted, carrying both the heat of ceremony and the silence that follows. Layered onto paper, these traces become visual palimpsests, holding forgotten and cherished memories alike, embodying the cyclical wisdom of ancestral practices while challenging our linear narratives of time and loss. Rooted in Chinese Indonesian traditions, the offerings were once prayers spoken in smoke; now, as residue, they form a visual language of memory, longing, and reverence. By turning ephemeral remnants into lasting marks, the series asks what is remembered, what is erased, and how ancestral wisdom persists even when words fail.