Jo$$ Reparations
Spirit money, ink, charcoal and cinnabar on xuan paper accordion book, organza, incense, and red lacquer chest, installed inside former Bank of America vault at ICA SF
2025
A history of reparations from 1783 to 2024 paid by the U.S. government, states, cities, religious institutions, universities and corporations, presented as a karmic checkbook and timeline using joss paper—spirit money traditionally burned in Chinese ancestor veneration practices as offering for loved ones in the afterlife.
The joss bills on each page represent a case of financial redress on the opposite side: for example, in 1783, Belinda Sutton was awarded 15 pounds and 12 shillings after 50 years of enslavement. In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act provided $1.2 billion to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. In 2019, students at Georgetown voted to increase their tuition by $27.20 to benefit the descendants of the 272 enslaved Africans that the Jesuits who ran the school sold in 1838.
This installation, in the historic vault of the Bank of America flagship building, is part of a speculative pirate organization using joss as a medium to pay reparations to ghosts. Reparations in the US are often framed as a financial transaction. Through joss, a cultural object linking Taoist ritual, Buddhist karmic balance, and practices of caring for the dead across Asian diasporas, I pay reparations as a spiritual and material act. It is an invitation for all to engage with histories of stolen land, labor, life, and consider our inheritance of unpaid debts as a responsibility in building our collective future. Can we imagine alternative ways of relation beyond racial capitalist logic?