A Taste of Home Cooking
If you looked to the kitchen for consolation during the pandemic, you were not alone. Poet and art critic John Yau noticed that his social media feed was full of what people were eating, and the trend became part of the inspiration for the food-themed group show, Home Cooking, that he’s curating at LaiSun Keane Gallery in Boston’s SoWa Arts District.
Yau invited 11 Asian-American artists, ten women and one man, to contribute two pieces each. They represent different generations, and come from widely different training and approaches. Yet Yau’s curatorial vision illuminates the paradoxical power of food to feel both deeply personal and universal.
Tammy Nguyen’s mixed-media paintings, for example, activate the concept of food. …he gnawed the steak off its T-bone… (2020) depicts a person, jaw and eyes wide, stuffing oozy handfuls of bats into his mouth. In vibrant watercolor, vinyl paint and metal leaf on paper stretched over a wood panel, the image puts the tactile experience of eating right into the viewers’ hands. The subject also conjures the “bat soup” myth, and the ugly fear and ignorance that boiled up during the pandemic. Nguyen says that Fire Season (2020) was born of another crisis—climate change. Wildfires smolder in the background of the four-by-four-foot piece (watercolor, vinyl paint, pastel, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood panels). Under a row of roasted ducks that extends across the four separate panels, a person sitting in the foreground grasps a duck by the neck. The same image is echoed in the two panels to the right, animating the scene as if across cells of a film strip. One can hear the crackling fire, smell the blaze, and taste the smokiness as it would be rendered in the meat. In creating this multisensory experience where the background and foreground action play out simultaneously, Nguyen successfully renders the ecological truth that, as she put it, “We are what we eat.”
That is true on psychological and social levels, too. “Food is memory and connection,” says artist Mie Yim. Her pastel drawings each feature a single food item on a monochrome paint sample no more than four inches square. The tender, reverent detail that she lavishes on even the most commonplace food elevates it to a delicacy—from an elegant ring of oysters on a handsome grey background to Pop-Tarts on punchy pink. She gives favorite culinary items to her friends as gifts and she serves them up to the public in monthly installments on Instagram. Sometimes the sentiment is playful; other times it carries the weight of a political statement, like the olive branch she posted in honor of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter in June. The tiny stack of deep green Korean seaweed on a fuschia background is a nostalgic one for her. “I’m invoking my cultural heritage by making these drawings and offering them to the public,” says Yim.
Food captures what’s fundamental to us; in the acts of choosing, preparing and consuming what we eat, we literally embody our identities. LaiSun Keane also recognizes this power in art itself. Her gallery is a space to bring people together by celebrating diversity of experience and expression. “As a female, as a minority, I want my gallery to be a platform for non-mainstream voices.” She seeks artists who might have been overlooked elsewhere.
A key to this inclusiveness is opening the gallery beyond the confines of tradition. That took on a very practical meaning when Keane opened her business in April 2020, just as a global pandemic was shutting most of the world down. Drawing on her affinity for technology, she hosted live virtual openings. She incorporated streaming soundtracks, video artist talks, and 3D renderings in her web-based displays. She sells work online and accepts cryptocurrency. Keane has designed her gallery to be a democratic space with a global reach.
Keane’s socially conscious approach aligns with Yau’s vision for the show. Yau decided the show would feature Asian-American artists who represent a diverse range of ages, styles and perspectives. The show also came together at the same time as increased violence and racism against Asians and Asian-Americans, women in particular, was playing out across the country. Keane has pledged to donate part of the proceeds from the show to the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative (AAWPI).
Keane hopes to offer an in-person opening with a talk by Yau, yet virtual tools remain important for how she and several of the artists in the show engage in the art world now. Home Cooking taps into the appetite for connection that draws us to enshrine our fluffy coffees and fancy tortilla folds in digital feeds. Both food and art fortify us, kindle memories, and engage the sensory experiences that shape our identities. They bring us together because we all need them, and they remind us that we all need to
be together, too.