Encounters in the 7th Month (2019 - 2024)

In Chinese folk culture, the seventh month of the Lunar Calendar is known as the “Hungry Ghost Month”. It is believed that during this period, the gates of the underworld are opened, allowing spirits to return to the human realm. A time when humans and spirits walk as one on earth. What was once dead is now amongst the living; what is living will someday be amongst the dead. Thus is the circle of life.

Encounters in the 7th Month imagines the world through the gaze of a spirit released from the underworld. Through a sequence of photographs, the spirit wanders through the human realm, encountering the rituals, offerings and getaiperformances that mark this annual passage between the living and the dead.

Adopting an imagined spirit's perspective, the work reframes familiar scenes of human activity as encounters between the visible and the unseen. The photographic journey culminates in the burning of incense papers, offerings sent from the living to the dead, bringing the spirit's passage through the human realm to a close.