Week 11

Nouilles instantanées $0.59

FOOD ART

Asmr that only cost $0.59.

Week 10

Killer ramen: College students who eat cheap instant foods are at risk for chronic diseases :

https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/killer-ramen-college-students-eat-cheap-instant-foods-risk-chronic-diseases-article-1.447754

Week 9

Food Art Proposal: Food Poverty and Privilege

I want to compare how much food you could get for $100. Due to the pandemic you can order online and I want to collect screenshots of the cart with a budget of $100. I want to compare how being healthy or veganism is many times a privilege for those who can afford it. I want to see how many different kinds of carts for different kinds of family I could feed with $100.

Also wanted to focus on the price of food in different provinces and the food insecurity throughout Canada, and how it had disproportionately affect indigenous, minorities, students and working class in Canada.

Food insecurity is on the rise due to the high unemployment rate in Canada since the outbreak. Those who cannot work from home, such as the working class including grocery store workers, are at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

Ive been unemployed until recently so food was something I struggled to afford. Expected students who are most likely to facing food insecurity and poverty to situate themselves to view food as art not a necessity is a privileged perspective. Food art is for the privileged, for those who do not have to struggle to afford food, for those who food is not their enemy like those suffering from eating disorders and for who are not aware of the privilege they have to be able to afford their groceries.

https://proof.utoronto.ca/food-insecurity/

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Week 8

Title: Happy Tortillas From Memory Video

With no recipe or help, somehow due to the conditions of my upbringing I know how to make a tortilla. Ive rejected making tortillas till now. Tortillas can represent the misogynist expectations placed on women in domestic spaces but can also represents a culture and traditions. By recreating the shape of a tortilla I reject societies expectation of what a tortilla should look like and represent. No matter the shape, a smilie face to a broken heart, a good tortilla and some good queso fresco (fresh cheese) will always make me happy.

Format: I was inspired by the layout of Zoom where multiple screens are both cohesive and Independently unique. During my Zoom meeting I found that often whenever someone was speaker sometimes others in the call would be cut off, therefore I only included the audio on the Masa (flour) mixing. The success of a tortilla relies on the consistency of the flour and since touch is virtual, only the sense of sound can be experienced.

Week 8 Continued

What does bread mean to you? What is your family’s relationship to bread? What is the centre of your meal – or your comfort food – if it’s rarely bread?  Why do you think so many people have been baking bread during the pandemic? Which aspects of the podcast did you find surprising, or striking and why?

Bread or other forms of bread such as tortillas, symbolizes a complete meal and family. I love bread and tortillas, but as I got older they symbolized guilt because diet culture constantly criminalizes bread. It is funny because if bread is life why are we allowing others to tell us not to eat it? Most of the time Bread itself wasn’t the cause of negative side effects but the decisions made by humankind. As in the podcast discusses the negative effects due the development of agriculture that is a direct result of the the creation of bread.

My family relationship with bread became a form of cultural identity. Tortillas are usually made by hand but a loaf of bread is always store bought. The ability to make tortillas is a cultural identity especially since availability of store bought tortillas. Making tortillas is also a form of resisting assimilation and rejecting western food that sometimes our bodies cannot process those foods. I can eat as much corn tortillas as I want but I can only stand eating a few pieces of bread.

I think bread is comfort food because it almost always will taste good and will always create security maybe in instances where the outcome is uncertain. Even if I don’t like any of the food at a gathering, I know that if there is bread I can make or eat something.

The podcast also spoke of bread as a form of trust and sharing. I never though of bread as having a deep symbolism but after hearing the podcast I was really intrigued by how important bread can be.

Week7

Proposal Feedback:

• Cooking through zoom
• visual instructions or no instruction
• ASMR cooking

Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome)

This work is really interesting to me because I really like the slight variance of sucking of teeth or “kissing your teeth” can change meaning or intent. This work especially resonates with me because sucking of teeth is something my sister does whenever I’ve done something that annoyed her, and I immediately laughed. In class some classmates expressed discomfort to hearing a sound and I found it interesting how sound in speech can vary depending on where and how you’ve grown up even in same geographically location.

The triptych videos and only a single sound source really reflected the importance of the sound to the work and a reflection of the African origin and how it is present through the diaspora.

With The Mobile Kitchen Lab (2010 – present), AlZeri

Using a technology for communication has increase importance through the virtual presence during this pandemic. AlZeri’s work reflects the importance of technology and how immigrants or those who like far from there family have always relied on it to keep contact. Distance and contact is very important to those who want to feel a connection through their culture or traditions, especially through food. Comfort food is call that for a reason, but depending on what exactly it is the accessibility to is varies.

The laptop out on the countertop while AlZeri cooks in very much the situation that would happen if we were at home doing the same thing. The artist recreates the environment and preforms the reaction to the instructions. I really like how the Skype is also shown in the projector as well, giving the mom a precedes in the work virtually.

Week 6

Topic: Food as Video Art

Cooking/Food can symbolize the domestic, gender roles, and tradition and I really want to embrace the domestic aspects cooking. Also the suggestion of distance and physical disconnect associated with the ZOOM format.

I wanted to explore cooking as a medium and find a way to make the work meaning full without feeling like a food commercial. I want to emulate cooking ASMR YouTube channels and create a ZOOM cooking channel.

For example:

Idea#1: I have a large collection of old recipes from a family friend who passed away 3 years ago. I wanted to recreate these recipes in a way to celebrate the legacy of the person they represent.

Idea#2: Have my mom explain how to make traditional food on camera outside of the cooking space and then have my try to recreate the recipe in the kitchen sold based of the instructions in the video. Focusing on the importance of recreating tradition and the matriarchal legacy.

Idea#3: I want to play with Idea #2 and ask my sisters to recreate family recipe from memory, without a recipe, to show how discrepancy of tradition when passed down. I felt that the outcome would vary since each sibling embraced cooking differently within the same household. I know I refused to learn many traditional cooking because it was a way I protested misogynist gender roles within the kitchen, but later in life saw the value learning as a way to pass on tradition.

Week 4

Bed portrait

I was inspired by Adad Hannah’s series From An Arrangement, Stripes. The conceptual morphing of subject and environment really interested me, but instead of matching the subject with the background I wanted to become part of it and represent with a green screen. The green screen depicts the the a time-lapse of 35 Million Coronavirus Cases & 1 Million Deaths worldwide since January, which is when Covid-19 started to get news coverage in North America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4q_9XLz1YE). Since the pandemic intimate and personal space have become public due to virtual meetings and learning that happens online. I have included the background music which is very similar on almost any case count on YouTube, which is very dramatic and reflective of the mood surrounding the information they depict, which includes the dead and recovered. Pandemic is in everyone mind and I wanted to reflect that and the forms of anxiety that have arise during it, fro example I am picking my nails in the video which became a new habit after quarantine which I still as struggling with.

These portrait are can easily be recreated and change over time as information become dated easily and begin to reflect a certain time period if the green screen in not update or live count

Week 3

Text Art
Emotional labor: is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job or action. Emotional labour is relative and meaning varies depending on the individual and just like any text art the meaning can be prompt by its locality. 

I was inspired by Hiba Abdallah‘s neon text art “we remain profoundly and infinitely connected”, I tried to emulate the script and continuous text. Hiba’s work are relative but language can be simple and evocative to those who read it. 

Emotional Labour to me is an action of self awareness and reaction to an environment. The labour is the effort evident through the action of care and the emotional expression of those actions. 

Week 2

Write:

Jon Rubin, The Last Billboard, 2010-2018, “There are black people in the future” Text by Alisha Wormsley and Elenor King, No Justice No Peace, 2015, The Peekskill Project, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, art both works that reflect the Black Lives Matter movement which protest the racial discrimination and inequality. Both mediums are text focused but the The Last Billboard is a public work and No Justice No Peace, is inside an institution. The Last Billboard due to it’s public message which is not “There are black people in the future” text by Alisha Wormsley, is not a controversial statement but the context of the gentrified location and racial tension that gentrification has notoriously disadvantageous towards BIPOC communities. The similarities in the message but the approach each artist took immensely affected the outcome because No Justice No Peace stays within the confines of what is comfortable to challenge the privilege while The Last Billboard challenged the context of the text and questioned then white western hemogony canon pushed by the elites, for example the area developers which pressured the removal of the program.

Week 1

I wanted to abstract a book stack as much as I since most of the books I had have titles that did not really create a readable spines. The stacks are cropped to emphasize the titles.

I started playing around with books that had titles that dealt with colonial and post colonial history.

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