Papering the Afterlife
Before reincarnation, you might need your stuff — your machine guns, cars, shoes, servants — you know, stuff. There’s an old, outlawed but tolerated Chinese custom of creating folded Joss paper into the form of their dead’s beloved earthly possessions and burning them as well-meaning effigies at the funeral ceremony. With the influx of capitalism, paper prostitutes, Viagra, ecstasy, gambling junk was sited smoldering at the graveyard. Artist and photographer Kurt Tong made you these, plus iPods, Louis Vuitton and some Mickey D. Safe travels, ghosts! “In Case It Rains in Heaven,” Kurt Tong, Jan 28 – Mar 4, Jen Bekman Projects, NYC.
by Marina Galperina on January 10, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Editor-in-Chief:
I've been to a Chinese funeral that had these. I burned a Mercedes-Benz. There's catalogs of these things by the hundreds and they are amazing paper-craft pieces, but what makes this fine art? The ones in the catalogs are just as crazy and absurd as these, but no one ever called them art. Go white people!
There's a shop on Mulberry across from Columbus Park that sells nothing but these: http://postimage.org/image/p4sdzym6j/