Objects of Desire
In this site-specific painted sculpture at The Smallest Gallery In Soho, my starting point is the nearby Chinatown restaurants where food is hung on hooks to advertise their freshness. I employ the sausage, a traditional Chinese fast food, to draw analogies between the food's suggestive form with issues of fetishism and objectification of the Asian female. On a formal level, Objects of Desire invites onlookers to re-examine cultural perceptions due to social conditioning.
I created Objects of Desire partly in response to the Stop Asian Hate movement. I recognize that the sausage’s form, and the act of its consumption is loaded with innuendo and uses our visual relationship with it to address the perception of the Asian female as hyper-sexualized to the Western gaze. The personal story of the Asian female is largely invisible, yet physically, she is often seen as a symbol of eroticism and an object to fulfil fantasies. Much like how the hanging food in restaurant windows promises to fulfil an urge in our bellies.