Who can afford to feed more ghosts (2021) by Arturo Kameya is part of the 2021 New Museum Triennial titled Soft Water Hard Stone in New York, NY (US).
The artwork arises from the friction between two particular events in Peru. The first is the story of Sarah Ellen Roberts, a British woman accused of witchcraft who, after immigrating to Peru, died in 1913 and was buried in the city of Pisco. Eighty years later, a self-proclaimed “vampirologist” announced on a popular talk show that Roberts was going to resurrect within a few days.
The rumor soared, and countless viewers watched Robert’s grave live on television the day that the prediction was said to come true, but nothing happened. The second story is about Jaime Rolando Urbina Torres, mayor of the Tantara District in Peru, who was arrested for flouting lockdown and breaking curfew during the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020. When Torres was caught drinking with friends in a wood workshop, he was found by police lying inside a coffin pretending to be dead, and photos of this absurd scene went viral. In Who can afford to feed more ghosts, Kameya reflects on these two bizarre stories of death, resurrection, and media manipulation and creates a dinner for the dead, a tradition in his Japanese-Peruvian family.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue copublished by the New Museum and Phaidon Press Limited. Designed by Elizabeth Karp-Evans and Adam Turnbull of Studio Pacific, the catalogue and includes contributions from Jamillah James, Margot Norton, Karen Archey, Eunsong Kim, and Bernardo Mosqueira, and features original interviews with all forty artists participating in the exhibition.
