HOLDING ARABESQUE

RECOGNIZED PHOTOLUCIDA CRITICAL MASS FINALIST

There is a strong emotional and social connection we all have with food and nostalgia. They can be viewed as coping mechanisms to navigate us through overwhelming stress and instability. They help us fuel the courage to confront our fears and tackle challenges while creating hope for the future.

Growing up, my mother would always yell at me to stop playing with my food and sit down at the table and eat. I used to enjoy making walrus tusks with french fries, creating miniature fortress walls with carrots and corn kernels and placing olives on my fingertips thinking I was some type of alien space creature. Reflecting back, those days were worry-free, filled with possibility and child-like imagination.

These past few years have forced me to accept some deep personal transitions in my life — the loss of family, adult children moving forward with their lives, the unpredictability of career brought on by the abrupt shifts of the pandemic, my own aging and the notion of longevity have all taken on a different weight. I turn to food and nostalgia as vehicles for comfort and a means to cope and process personal loss, instability, and uncertainty — searching for a more stable, innocent, and worry-free time.

Holding Arabesque is an inward reflection that investigates our relationship with food and nostalgia and how both are used as coping mechanisms for stability during times of crisis and stress. Inspired by the abrupt shifts brought on by the pandemic, the series captures an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today. Created all in camera, I use keepsakes along with food, patterns, shapes, forms, and colors as whimsical, playful, and nostalgic tableaux, choreographed in disciplined arrangements as symbols for hope. These cheerful totems disrupt the frame with unrealistic ways in which we are normally accustomed seeing food presented. Towering precariously, they question the delicate balance between stability and uncertainty – but most importantly, giving permission as an adult, that it’s still ok to play with your food.