Within the cultural landscape of globalized cities, I have noticed the existence of a particular form of Asian fusion cuisine. Drawing from cultures such as Japan, Korea, and China, these dishes no longer fully belong to either the Western world or their original Eastern cultural contexts. Detached from their original depth and context, they become reassembled elements, symbols, and representations, resembling simulacra emerging from a flattened and vacuum-like space-time.
As their original systems of reference become disconnected, these forms become fragmented, losing their previous meanings and directions while becoming detached from their origins. Yet these cultural remnants created by twenty-first-century commercial society seem to develop a life of their own. The forms and symbols they generate resemble the monolith that appears before the apes in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: an existence detached from its original explanation, yet continuing to produce meaning and influence.
I gradually realized that the forms of these fusion cuisine-like products are more intriguing than the cultural origins they attempt to represent. In this project, I construct scenes across different dimensions and scales, using form to cover, distort, and reactivate the texts and meanings they originally embody.