Ashley Zhang - Connecting Through Food

AP Art, Menlo School 2017. Taught by Nina Ollikainen.

This collection explores the ways in which food connects humans, from friends and families to strangers. People often use meals as a medium to come together and bond through shared experiences despite differences in age, race, background, or opinion. Food is also a way to celebrate, comfort, pass traditions, and experience cultures. It nourishes both the physical body and interpersonal human connections.

My paintings depict a diverse range of people, locations, foods, and perspectives in order to represent the numerous ways in which food connects us. Some of the pieces, focus heavily on the food, whereas some barely show it, but imply its role. This is because it isn’t the food itself that connects people, but the act of coming together to share it. The exchange of food between two strangers is just as important and powerful as sharing a meal with loved ones. In some pieces, I omitted the details of individual faces because connecting through food is more about the communal energy than the individual people. Food knows no boundaries, as people of all walks of life can enjoy the shared experiences it creates. In most of the pieces, the composition is open and the subjects face the viewer, as if the viewer is also part of the shared experience.