Studio Kitchen

Location: Santa Cruz, California
Artist in Residence at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

While I was in residency, I bridged the private space of the kitchen with the public space of the museum. Exploring Santa Cruz’s place on the coast as a hub for trade routes, the gallery kitchen will feature how historical recipes are an amalgamation of cultural roots. How does culture shape the food we eat? How does the food we eat shape culture? Given my Singaporean roots, food has always been an interest to my studio practice But the food’s place of preparation has remained a mystery, an offstage space. A void of historical and cultural knowledge. During my residency, I chartered the kitchen to the surface where I explored historic and contemporary recipes with the public.

Kimbap & The Koreas

As part of this residency, I invited artist, Hannah Naomi Varamini to collaborate with me on an event held in my Studio Kitchen at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

Kimbap, a Korean food thought to have originated during the Japanese occupation, is composed of a core of colorful vegetables and meat surrounded by rice, bound by a sheet of seaweed. The participatory artwork gathered people at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art on July 21 + 22, 2016 to collaboratively assemble rolls of Kimbap, discuss the histories that this food symbolizes, and eat together: reflecting on the question of what it means to own and ingest history and words.

Seaweed sheets were inscribed with text written by modern Korean poet Hahm Dong-Seon, who was born in 1930 in the northern part of Japanese-occupied Korea. The partition of the Korean Peninsula in 1945 effectively exiled the poet from his hometown, situated in what is now North Korea.

Tunnel No.3, Hahm Dong Seon (excerpted)

The legacy of the great powerswhen they threw the owners out
and took over our living rooms, on the pretext
they were trying to stop the fighting,
they were on our side
lives on in history
as the armistice line the demilitarized zone.