Three Generations Happy Family, Collector's Set

What warrants an object to the elevated status of a valued cultural object?

Designed to resemble a takeout menu, Three Generations Happy Family contains a timeline of my familial history told via food as a political and socioeconomic indicator. My father survived China’s Great Famine, a tragedy that claimed 55 million lives. My mother endured malnutrition under food rationing in Taiwan, during the longest period of Martial Law prior to Syria.

Years later, in the United States, a takeout restaurant in Connecticut became the first economic steppingstone that enabled the chain migration of my family. This restaurant was also the meeting place of my Taiwanese mother and Chinese father, in a re-stitching of identity that happens as a direct result of colonialism and diaspora.

Three Generations Happy Family is part of my body of work, 米 (mǐ) uncooked rice. 米 (mǐ) is the Chinese word for uncooked rice, or the seed grain itself, a metaphor for that which could sustain us, but in its unprocessed form is indigestible.

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ARTIST’S BOOK DETAILS:
Dimensions: 8.5” x 3.2” folded, 8.5” x 11” expanded
Media: artist’s book, laserjet on 80-lb matte photo paper, plastic menu holder
Date: 2023

PACKAGE CONTENTS:

• 12 (twelve) copies of artist’s book entitled, Three Generations Happy Family, designed to resemble a Chinese takeout menu
• 1 (one) plastic menu holder