Fortune Cookie Making Workshop at Seward Park, New York,, invited by Art Parley, 2018
Fortune Cookie Making Workshop at Seward Park, New York,, invited by Art Parley, 2018
Fortune Cookie Dictionary
2015
Alphabetized collection of fortune cookie papers with Chinese vocabularies
3x3/4x1 ½ inches / 7.6x1.9x3.81 cm
For the past 3 years, I have been collecting the slips of paper found inside fortune cookies, which are typically served as dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States (Although they originated in nineteenth-century Japan). These pieces of paper are printed with words of wisdom or a vague prophecy. On its reverse, there is also a phrase or vocabulary word in Chinese, with an accompanying English translation. I have been collecting these vocabularies and sorting them into English alphabetical order in order to make them function as a mini Chinese-English dictionary.
Fortune Cookie Dictionary (Performance)
2015
Video
Duration 4:40
I intend to use this dictionary as a textbook to learn and practice Chinese in everyday life. I documented an attempt to use this dictionary in real, daily-life situations in Chinatown in Flushing, Queens, NY.
Fortune Cookie Dictionary: Second Edition
2019
Alphabetized collection of fortune cookie papers with Chinese vocabularies
3x3/4x2 inches / 7.6x1.9x5 cm 190Pages
Fortune Cookie Workshop
2018
Participants write fortunes that they seek in their life or their favorite words of wisdom in their own languages on a strip of paper and the artist bakes fortune cookie to wrap their fortune writings. The cookies are mixed and served together and each participants pick a cookie that has a fortune word from someone in the group.
As there are many immigrants who work and/or live this neighborhood around the park where the workshop happens, this project gives them a space to reflect on immigration history and cultural contributions/exchanges. The fortune cookie itself as an object tells a story about history of the Asian diaspora in America. Fortune cookie is associated with Chinese
American restaurants, and how the fortune cookie came to be in US intersects with the country's history of Japanese internment.
