Tif Ng 伍家恩

Wishing Well is an ongoing body of work focusing on objects, rituals, and myth-making. This series is inspired by ancestral Chinese practices, and American and Chinese food celebrations. Using a combination of family archive materials and original photographs to create these photo sculptures, I hope to explore how objects carry our dreams, wishes and spirits.

This is an ongoing body of work that was born after the death of my Grandpa in 2021. With the borders closed during Covid, and being stuck far away from home, I was left to create and experiment with different ways of celebrating his life and mourning his passing through art making. I was working with what I had on me for 3 years when China’s borders were closed, I had a carry on suitcase with me and a small box of family photos. The idea of smoke was very interesting to me, historically across many cultures, smoke was a way of carrying people’s wishes, dreams, spirits up into the heavens. Blowing a candle on a cake, or burning joss paper is a way of bringing objects to our ancestors.

These photo sculptures are not meant to last- but to be transferred into a different form.

This is a work-in-progress of joss paper suits that I am making. In this particular pattern on the suit, are scans of a dream journal [dated 1907] that I found at an antiques market in Hang Zhou, China. In the front of this book is a 祖谱 [Genealogy/family tree], and in the back of this book is the dream journal. On this page of the dream journal, this person writes about their dream of clouds forming into a stairway into the sky. I loved this image, and I loved the idea of this dream journal being saved because of the family tree. I am exploring the Chinese ritual of joss papers burning— through smoke, sending objects and wishes to your ancestors in another realm.