the burners
2026
Sculpture, (in cm) 33W x 29D x 14H
Materials: Industrial flight case with foam inserts, hand-formulated natural incense sculptures (sustainable aromatic wood powders & heritage binders), plantation-derived Agarwood essential oil compound.
THE BURNERS convenes around the sculpture's olfactory evocation and the contested materiality of Agarwood — the wood of the gods — and site of the "burner phone" as a covert, off-grid communications device. What would it take to sustain a memory, an ancestral connection, a cultural/spiritual practice knowing the implications across borders
Agarwood historically earned its reverent cultural status as a miracle of nature, through a fragrant hormonal response the tree initiates in response to ecological trauma, drawing connections between illness and transformation. Venerated for millennia across spiritual traditions, it has long been used in Chinese and Southeast Asian medicinal practices, and burned as part of ancestor veneration and calling upon the gods in ceremonial rites. Today, these rituals still endure transnationally, even as they are increasingly exploited by global luxury markets and simulated heritage branding that commodify this sacred history.
For this work, I revive the near extinct Chinese craft form of joss carving (sculpting with incense through an admixture of natural binding powders and aromatic wood powders). The work invokes its materiality to pull apart this marketplace mysticism, pointing to the fading ecology of Agarwood over time through neocolonial extraction and over harvesting, deforestation, rapid urbanisation and modern-day illegal poaching. A network of wild trees that grows more and more tenuous with time, sanctioned ethical harvesting now takes place through plantation systems, with trade strictly regulated by CITES. A spiritual connection that was once an organic miracle used to call upon gods and ancestral spirits, now manufactured through biohacking on monoculture farms, and entangled in international bureaucratic layers of conservation.
Hand-compounded using traditional heritage binders and developed through a strategy of material proxies, the sculpture embodies a fragment of ancestral landscape held within my private custody. The burners either remain in their current static form, or leave through burning/dissipating into the atmosphere. Much like the use of a burner phone itself, the choice to make the call invites a reflection on consequence: that of discovery, of giving away location, of vulnerability to exposure and consumption, and technology’s role in accelerating planetary illness. To find a way through these restrictions, we must negotiate the tension between preservation and the uncertain territory of transmission.
Sculpture, (in cm) 33W x 29D x 14H
Materials: Industrial flight case with foam inserts, hand-formulated natural incense sculptures (sustainable aromatic wood powders & heritage binders), plantation-derived Agarwood essential oil compound.
THE BURNERS convenes around the sculpture's olfactory evocation and the contested materiality of Agarwood — the wood of the gods — and site of the "burner phone" as a covert, off-grid communications device. What would it take to sustain a memory, an ancestral connection, a cultural/spiritual practice knowing the implications across borders
Agarwood historically earned its reverent cultural status as a miracle of nature, through a fragrant hormonal response the tree initiates in response to ecological trauma, drawing connections between illness and transformation. Venerated for millennia across spiritual traditions, it has long been used in Chinese and Southeast Asian medicinal practices, and burned as part of ancestor veneration and calling upon the gods in ceremonial rites. Today, these rituals still endure transnationally, even as they are increasingly exploited by global luxury markets and simulated heritage branding that commodify this sacred history.
For this work, I revive the near extinct Chinese craft form of joss carving (sculpting with incense through an admixture of natural binding powders and aromatic wood powders). The work invokes its materiality to pull apart this marketplace mysticism, pointing to the fading ecology of Agarwood over time through neocolonial extraction and over harvesting, deforestation, rapid urbanisation and modern-day illegal poaching. A network of wild trees that grows more and more tenuous with time, sanctioned ethical harvesting now takes place through plantation systems, with trade strictly regulated by CITES. A spiritual connection that was once an organic miracle used to call upon gods and ancestral spirits, now manufactured through biohacking on monoculture farms, and entangled in international bureaucratic layers of conservation.
Hand-compounded using traditional heritage binders and developed through a strategy of material proxies, the sculpture embodies a fragment of ancestral landscape held within my private custody. The burners either remain in their current static form, or leave through burning/dissipating into the atmosphere. Much like the use of a burner phone itself, the choice to make the call invites a reflection on consequence: that of discovery, of giving away location, of vulnerability to exposure and consumption, and technology’s role in accelerating planetary illness. To find a way through these restrictions, we must negotiate the tension between preservation and the uncertain territory of transmission.