Copublished with the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, this book accompanies Spirit House, a significant exhibition related to the museum’s Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI). A thematic exploration of the work of 33 Asian American and Asian diasporic artists, Spirit House asks the question, what does it mean to speak to ghosts, inhabit haunted spaces or enter different dimensions? Inspired by spirit houses, small devotional structures found throughout Thailand that provide shelter to the supernatural, this book considers how art can collapse the distance between the past and present, as well as between this world and the next. Here, contemporary artists reckon with the spiritual and spectral in our visual culture, question the many forms that ghosts can take and challenge data-driven, scientific methods of understanding the world around us. Featuring many previously unpublished works, this first publication of the AAAI includes an essay by preeminent Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and four ghost stories by artists included in the exhibition.

This publication is available for purchase in relation to the Henry’s presentation of Spirit House. 

Hard cover, 192 pages.