At the opening night reception of A Sensory Feast, an exhibition at San Francisco’s SOMArts, the curators asked the question: Are you what you eat? The question, however, was not that of a nutritionist or a concerned grandparent. The question was a cultural one, and the ten exhibiting Asian American artists explored the relationship between what they eat and who they are as individuals and as Asian Americans.
Installation artist Amy M. Ho offered a wardrobe full of wearable food sculptures. Attendees stripped out of their winter coats and enacted the roles of their favorite foods, including strawberries, raspberries, and durian. As participants posed for the opening–night-only photo op, food became fashion, an undeniable signifier of identity. These costumes suggest that when one eats durian, a slice of her identity is revealed in the same way that a slice is revealed when she wears a Donna Karan dress. The food that we eat, then, is not just a passive means to nutrition, but something we wear on our sleeves, figuratively and, at the opening, literally.More analytically, self-described conceptual archivist Arthur Huang addressed similar concerns. He recorded everything he ate or drank over the course of one year, synthesizing the results in 2002 Diet as Periodic Table (2004), a mock, large-scale periodic table with foodstuffs sitting in as elements. The work is a literal tabulation of his pre-digestion makeup, but there is also an implication that the ten to fifteen times a month he used mustard that spring, or the three servings of mango pudding he ate that September, represent something more about who he is. His culture is reflected in his sustenance.
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik installed MCDXCII (2010), a living room with curry as wallpaper and table design. The work’s title (1492 in Arabic numerals) demands attention to the oft-ignored history behind our food. Curry, thought of as quintessentially Asian, would not have become spicy were it not for Columbus’ voyage and the resulting introduction of American chili to the Old World. The golden goblets and the chocolate coins that fill them are forever tied together by the trade value of chocolate for South American colonizers. As the artist is of Bengali, Japanese, and Colombian descent, these histories are personal as much as they are culinary. Bhaumik noted that attendees were reluctant to get up close and personal and smell the curry wallpaper, until she or her friends set the lead. This suggests that even at an event billed as being for all five senses, the intimate relationship between art and vision still dominates.
It is not just our gustatory senses that mark our identities; the olfactory is just as personal. In the center of the gallery, perfumer and aromatic artist Yosh Han presented a table of seven vials each with their own aroma and associated personality. Personas included: the optimist, the bon vivant, the empress, the lush,the intellectual, and the lover. After sampling each and selecting their preferred perfume, attendees were expected to pick up a handheld mustache mask sprayed with the appropriate scent. Many carried these tokens throughout the night, performing their perfumed parts. My apparent predilection for “refreshing tomato leaf, castoreum, pettitgrain, wild honey, and champagne musk” cast me in the role of the bon vivant.
The artists that comprise A Sensory Feast take different approaches to understanding their sensory selves. Nonetheless, they all make clear that they see their identities as tied to their culinary habits, whether it’s Huang’s oatmeal raisin cookies or Bhaumik’s curry. The audience that packed SOMArts for the reception seemed receptive to this idea as they wore their food, temporarily tattooed it onto their bodies, and, not least of all, flocked to Señor Sisig’s Filipino taco truck outside.
A Sensory Feast, on view at SOMArts in San Francisco, closes tonight with a reception and panel discussion with the artists. The other participating artists are: JD Beltran, Brandon Bigelow, Jean Chen, Kira Greene, and the National Bitter Melon Council (Hiroko Kikuchi and Jeremy Liu).
Photos: benneedhamstudio.com
