AN ALTAR FOR OUR ASHES

An Altar for Our Ashes  is a traveling altar that gathers ancestral wisdoms into collective prayer. Presented with SAVVY Contemporary, as part of the mobile intervention by Saca Sal in the Bienal opening programme, the project is rooted in Taoist cosmology and shaped by diverse traditions of reverence and resistance. The altar invites guests to offer something from the heart: a blessing, a hope, a quiet gesture. These contributions are woven into a collective poem, then inscribed onto divination sticks, to accompany others through these times of unravelling. Each guest departs with a stamped blessing and a thread of 緣份 (yuánfèn), a reminder of the karmic ties that bind us. As the altar travels, it carries the offerings from São Paulo, a city of convergence. In October, it continues to Vientiane, Laos, before moving on to other sites of collective reckoning and imagination.

Panthea Lee 李佩珊  is a writer, cultural organizer, and transdisciplinary facilitator committed to structural justice and collective liberation. Rooted in Daoist, feminist, and reparative traditions, her practice lies at the intersection of the spiritual and the political, stewarding spaces for grief, repair, and collective transformation. Her work has spanned 30+ countries—primarily across the Global Majority – where she has accompanied and built coalitions for human rights, economic justice, climate justice, knowledge equity, and collective healing. She lives in Taipei, on the unceded ancestral lands of the Ketagalan.