On the Other Side: Reflections on William Plummer’s Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss

The word “melt” suggests potential, a process triggered by a reaction. What triggers is

numerous, but how do traditions, roles, definitions, entire notions of being and selfhood begin

to melt away through our work? What gets left behind? The artists featured in the exhibition

Melt, as stated by curator Camile E. Messerly, “are in-transition,” but where are they going?

And are we as viewers on this same journey? This work required to proceed from one place

to another–whether physical, spiritual, mental, or emotional–occupied me as I analyzed

William Plummer’s installation Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss. Reconsidering our

relationships to objects, their work questions the historical and affective pull of the things we

hold closest to us and how they can shape us, both historically and presently. Harnessing

specific imagery, prints, and sculpture they establish a new system of value and space to

honor one’s labor and love.

Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss by William Plummer. Image courtesy of the artist.

The installation features two distinct components, the first being a series of printed works

and the second, a wooden table placed directly in front. Both components reimagine the

same visual motif of a rectangular shape and graphic, but through different means. On the

wall is a display of almost two hundred small, identical rectangular red and gold relief prints

of a lotus flower. The prints reference traditional Chinese joss papers used in funerary

burnings as offerings to the spirits, dating back to 1000 BC. Today, joss papers are in their

own state of transition, being reimagined for contemporary audiences. Plummer’s printed

matter is assembled together on the wall in an evenly gridded formation, each row and

column linked together by red thread. The interconnectivity of a generation, or a “bloodline,”

suggestive of this thread indicates this work’s purpose: to stand tall and together, to be here

and present.

The ritual of burning joss paper as a form of worship is still practiced to this day.

Contemporary joss papers range from ones similar to Plummer’s own prints to being more

representational of advanced capitalism and globalization. Paper versions of iPhones, luxury

handbags, buildings, clothes, or vehicles indicate the type of imaginative entrepreneurialism

influencing the market. Perhaps it is thought today’s spirits might have wanted the new

iPhone or Gucci purse. Plummer’s joss papers, however, reject these familiar objects in

order to remind us of was past. Their new object is a return to the old, recalling specificity

and intention to. While joss papers represents objects of impermanence and transmission,

the artist asks us to stop. As images, their prints make us want to investigate and to consider

them historically. Reading this work, one can locate the symbology of the lotus flower as an

object of beauty. Furthermore, they bring to mind the original temporality of joss paper and

the ritual transporting the physical into the spiritual. Plummer wishes for beauty to remain.

I also learned from the artist an alternate name for these small, printed ephemera: “ghost

money.” Our own connection to money today has become similarly immaterial. The emphasis

of this ritual currency is placed on intention, with ghost money being selected for a particular

spirit to then be burned. The flames and smoke act as a vehicle sending this form of specific

capital to the spirits not here with us (payment received). Likewise, we send our own ghost

money today through apps such as Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, or Go Fund Me to our own

loved ones as an act of generosity. Both performances indicate the intention of love or

kinship, though the latter’s gestures are fast, easy, and convenient. There is little thought or

ritual required to perform this action on our phones.

Cookie Detail from Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss by William Plummer. Image courtesy of the

artist.

And yet, Plummer also chooses to not burn their materials. At the center of their grid of prints

is a column of three different types of mechanical reproduction, blending in yet standing

apart from the others. Plummer’s own glass-beaded versions, originally appearing as a

triptych titled Glass Joss, make a different declaration. Whereas the mass of prints indicates

labor in a large, all-encompassing way, these are more quiet and painstaking in their

conception. Here, the artist carefully and laboriously beaded their image line-by-line to create

small unique works deviating from the prints around them.

Beading carries it own set of rules and parameters, giving the artist room to play with how

they construct their image. This whimsical spirit to recontextualize the whole through small

gestures seemingly acts as an intentional point of origin to the entire installation. Centralizing

the glass beaded works provides its own romantic declaration as the core focus on this

component. Glass indicates permanence in the face of the flames to deny the history of

these objects. Unlike the joss it references, this glass will not burn–it is intended to stay.

When a flame is finished burning, what remains are the ashes of the material we gave it. In

the second component of Passages to my Ā pó, ash is seemingly conjured in the form of a

fine crumbs from crushed egg roll cookies and sugar piled on a rectangular wooden table.

“Food,” Plummer told me, “is often left as an offering for the recently deceased and other

spiritual entities, as it is believed they still inhabit the natural plane.” The rectangular form of

the tabletop and pile of cookie powder mirrors the shape and graphics of the prints on the

wall, down to the lotus flower design gracefully drawn with white sugar on top. If the history

of the papers remind us of what is chosen to be given up, the table in this installation

signifies what is chosen to remain. The sweetness Plummer leaves here is their own gesture

of kindness to us. The treat, a favorite of the artists’ grandmother, becomes an abstracted

form of the prints. The table acts as a totem to the maternal figure as well as to how we

remember what we have chosen to materially give up.

Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss by William Plummer. Image courtesy of the artist.

While the prints show themselves in a well-designed evenly gridded manner, Plummer’s

interests are more personal and focused around us as viewers. The table interrupts our

viewing of a traditional wall-based work such as the prints and thus more considerate of

space and our experience. In Edmund Husserl’s theory of phenomenology, despite the

abstract psychological worlds we may travel in deep thought, the table we sit at was always

grounding us with some kind of objective truth to its qualities. Despite the swirling mass of

our affective worlds, you are here at the table. It stands as the model for the subject-object

relationship, illustrating how we can understand a world we feel seemingly lost in.

Returning to the context of the exhibition, what is left after everything melts away? The

second part to Plummer’s title is Transplanted Joss, referring back to the transition Messerly

refers to in her exhibition statement. “Trans” becomes the key prefix, referring to something

being “on the other side.” Someone could declare, “I am undergoing a transition,” or, “I am a

recent transplant to the area,” to indicate they are not entirely here right now, but rather over

there in some way. Both Plummer’s prints and table make it clear the original joss they refer

to are not entirely here. Plummer’s table, similarly to Husserl’s, is the mediator in this

installation between an emotional, psychological, spiritual world (or some combination of all

three) and the physical one. The installation transforms materials into aesthetic vehicles,

certainly, but retains the original ritual act of generosity.

We too, like the materials being referenced, shall also pass on. William Plummer’s work (and

specifically their labor) contains rich narratives about the importance of healing spaces and

affective gestures to remember and honor the memory of the temporal. Prioritizing the

readability of objects in their installations, their practice’s careful and sensitive use of material

and language creates opportunity for us to reflect the role objects play in mediating our

relationship to others. While the materials offer a variety of interpretations, Plummer is

working sentimentally here. Ā pó, in the title, is Mandarin for granny. While these materials

can affectively shape a variety of viewers with the interpretations of materials meaning this

thing and that thing, Plummer is quite simply honoring to their own family bloodline.

Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss by William Plummer. Image courtesy of the artist.

By keeping materials known for their temporality situated firmly in place, Plummer’s

installation allows us to appreciate what we choose to hold on to and what we let go. With

this installation, the artist has created a space of quiet reciprocity and appreciation. Through

their materials and their work, they reflect on the labor involved in generous acts. Plummer

gives and the work gives back. Like the joss papers being referenced, this installation will

also eventually pass. And so will we. However, Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss

honors the labors of love, visible or not.