Grief Ritual (2021)

We build altars. We drink tea. We translate each other’s grief. We dance our grief together.

How do we grieve together when it is not safe to gather? I created this series of virtual grief rituals at the height of California’s COVID-19 lockdowns as a response to the fact that so many of us were living with prolonged, unacknowledged grief, loss, and heartache. Combining altar-building, plant medicine, creative writing, and dance, each ritual was designed with and for a specific community, including Asian American artists mourning in the aftermath of the Atlanta spa murders.