YÍNG YANG

YÍNG YǍNG [NUTRITION] is a collection of 8 paintings that explore the stories and identities of four Asian Americans through food, specifically investigating confrontations with shame, intergenerational relationships, and history.

Yíngyǎng means ‘nutrition’ in Mandarin and sounds similar to the infamous Taoist concept of ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ are two opposing, but interdependent forces or energies. For instance, one should be consuming a balance of ‘warming’ and ‘cooling’ foods, experience both rest and activity, peace and stress. Through creating this work, I found themes of ‘push and pull’ present in many AA stories, including mine: food makes us feel shame and pride, responsibility and opportunity, beauty and cruelty.

I have felt feel shame over food in school cafeterias and nutrition classes, pride learning about the contributions by Asian Americans to food culture today. I have felt responsibility to cook and eat the foods of my ancestors as someone who was socialized as a woman, but also opportunity to learn about the beautiful histories and stories of people around me. Food is beauty and delicious, but also crude and sad in the way we often treat the people who make and preserve it.

Studying Western nutrition for the past six years, my professors focused on the clinical aspects of food, and how those nutrients interacted with our physical bodies. When we did discuss the impacts that our identities, cultures, and communities had on what and how we eat, it was separate, an afterthought to the empirical truths of nutrition science. And Eastern practices and evidence, carried from thousands of years of knowledge, were disregarded as pseudo science. After experiencing health issues that were not addressed by western nutrition, and finding relief from a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor, I’ve come to respect and learn from different types of truths, evidence, and science.

I research and paint foods used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices and contrast those ideas against Western nutrition standards, gender norms, and cultural practices. The purpose of these paintings is to reflect that dualism of our Asian American experience; that we are both distinctly Asian, but also very much American. We feel acceptance and rejection from both sides, but from those experiences, find solidarity with each other and the intersections of our identities. Our identities and foods are shaped not only by ourselves, but how others perceive us.

Work Descriptions

Corn

48 x 60 inches, Oil on Wood