The 'Spirit House' exhibition at Stanford's Cantor Arts Center showcases works by 33 artists, reflecting themes of migration, haunting, and communication with ancestral spirits, organized by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander. Drawing inspiration from her Thai heritage and personal experiences, including sleep paralysis, Alexander views these experiences as links to the spiritual realm. Set against the cultural backdrop of Southeast Asia, where spirit houses symbolize the connection between life and death, the exhibition encourages deep reflection on existential themes and the transcendence of time and space through art.
I have been working on the show for two years. But if I think about my life, I feel like I've been thinking about some of these ideas forever. The show is not just about art history-to me, it's about broader existential questions in life.
In a lot of Southeast Asia, there are almost daily opportunities to consider life and death and the border between them. One way is through spirit houses, small structures with offerings outside of most buildings in Thailand.
Rather than being perceived as a kind of trauma, in Thailand, where she was born and grew up, it was believed to be caused by a spirit.
Alexander writes she saw these events as 'sneak peeks into the beyond.' The 33 artists of Spirit House explore the idea of artists traveling through time and space.
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