A white drape embroidered with a couplet—“I snuggle into the wedding chamber from my tomb bed, my shin is the lintel; I snuggle into the tomb bed from my wedding chamber, my hair is the quilt, the spirit-guiding streamer”—hangs like a shroud across the space. Its form draws from traditional Chinese funeral décor, standing in stark contrast to the red bridal veil prepared for the bride within the same installation. Beneath these opposing fabrics, the performance unfolds: a “ghost bride” sits before a mirror. Her wedding belongs to a funeral that was never hers. The red makeup accumulates in vain—layer upon layer—yet evades the capture of the infrared camera, dissolving at the threshold between visibility and disappearance.

The work references the enduring custom of “ghost marriage” still practiced in parts of rural China—a macabre ritual that conflates marriage and funeral rites. In many cases, the family of an unmarried man who has died young seeks a female corpse as his bride to continue the ancestral line. As cremation replaces burial, the trade in female corpses has intensified: the price of a woman’s body has soared, and incidents of corpse theft and even murder for corpses have emerged.

From the perspective of the “ghost bride,” the work probes the necrotechnics of entombment—ritual and symbolic mechanisms through which the corpse is virtualized and transformed into an “asset” mediating exchange between yin and yang. “Once sealed, the tomb shall never be reopened.” This line, from an Eastern Han tomb inscription, reveals the architectural principle of burial: closure, once and for all—a symbolic trick that first exposes the cavity, then fills it negatively. In the instant of entombment, the corpse, its burial goods, and the space it occupies are transposed from the realm of yang—the world of the living—to the realm of yin—the world of the dead. Death is thereby concealed: the corpse is virtualized, becoming an intermediary pawned to the underworld, yet still exerting efficacy within the world of the living.