Next Life / New Life Offering

“Lim fuses her Chinese-Malaysian culture with Swan Coastal Plain botany and her belief in the Baha’i Faith. Her paper cutting (a Chinese folk art), depicts firewood banksia - a complex flower that utilises fire to re-generate. The paper cuts are backed by the gold leaf of joss paper (spirit money), which is burned at funerals in many Chinese cultures for the prosperity of family and ancestors who have passed onto the next life. In the Baha’i Faith, fire is used as a metaphor - as a power that burns away the veils that exist between the believer and things of the spirit, such as attachment to the material world. 

‘Burn ye away the veils with the fire of My love, and dispel ye the mists of vain imaginings.’ - Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas p.66

The work speaks about the transformational power of fire, a natural process and asks what must feed the fire to reach a new life or the next life?