Portrait of a Cantonese Family, 2023

handmade paper [takeout menus, Lipton teabags, gold leaf, and government documents] and cookbook collection.  

An 18 page handmade paper book with silk thread binding, accompanied by selected works from my paternal grandfather’s cookbook collection, yuenyeung, steamed buns, and egg roll cookies, that use Cantonese recipes, Han papermaking and bookbinding techniques, and food related knowledge to question notions of authenticity, hybridity, assimilation, and labour issues within colonial power structures. This work confronts epistemological differences between Western-colonial and Cantonese conceptions of food and family, and is situated within an anti-colonial and anti-imperial framework.