“Not quite a funeral. Not quite a celebration.”This installation sits somewhere in between—a quiet moment for things we once held, then forgot.A plastic bag is more than a piece of trash or an orphan born at a cash register. It drifts through cities and oceans, surviving storms and landfills. Its stubborn existence mirrors our rootless reality—chasing jobs, scrolling feeds, clinging to things that don’t really matter.This is not just a funeral for the plastic bag. It is also a mourning for all the weightless things we leave behind. And in some way, it is a funeral for myself too— for the parts of me that were overlooked, that floated by unnoticed, that I’m only now learning to let go of.The work draws from Chinese funerary traditions, especially the burning of paper offerings—rituals meant to send objects to the afterlife. Paper is believed to be the only material that, when burned, can be received by the dead. In this spirit, I created paper versions of plastic bags using washi paper to mimic their texture and fragility. Alongside them are paper replicas of the things they once held or encountered: a water bottle, an apple, a cardboard box, scattered pieces of trash. They float through the space like echoes—familiar, but fading.The installation includes two versions of Ancestor Money, printed with the bag’s image and its belongings. A cream-white painted shopping cart acts as an urn and altar. Modified candles, matching accessories, cream-colored sand, rocks, and a projected flame together create a space that feels ceremonial, but uncertain—solemn, quiet, and slightly surreal.At first, I considered making everything hyper-realistic, so the audience would immediately recognize the scene as a funeral. But realism felt too direct, too grounded. It stripped away the ambiguity I needed. So I turned to my 2D illustration style—abstract forms that whisper rather than shout—and expanded them into three dimensions. Like my drawings, this installation is not about answers. It's about atmosphere, about building a world you can feel before you understand.Through this work, I want to offer a resting place—not just for plastic bags, but for everything we discard, forget, or outgrow. Maybe by giving them a quiet goodbye,the emptiness they leave behind becomes just a little lighter. Website: Instagram: Categories MFA Thesis 2025 Published on May 02, 2025