Colorado’s Asian Food Culture: Rice & Resilience

History Colorado Center

1200 N. Broadway, Denver, CO 80203

April 16, 2022–April 2, 2023

Admission: $15, free for members and kids (18 and under)

Review by Danielle Cunningham

While many wax nostalgic about their favorite childhood foods or those specific to their culture, food plays a deeper, sometimes mystical role in Colorado artists’ work at History Colorado Center’s new exhibition Colorado’s Asian Food Culture: Rice & Resilience.

A view of the atrium and exhibition *Colorado’s Asian Food Culture: Rice & Resilience* at History Colorado. Image by *DARIA*.

The Japanese Arts Network and Asian Pacific Islander (API) community partnered with the museum for this exhibition, pairing Asian artists’ voices with testimonies from restaurateurs and other community members to highlight the wealth of Asian cuisine in the state and food’s ability to transmit generational knowledge. Chef Jeff Osaka, owner of Osaka Ramen in Denver’s River North neighborhood, notes the latter, stating, “A lot of influence on my restaurant comes from my mother,” who could “debone a chicken like no one’s business.” [1]

Akemi Tsutsui-Kunitake, *Nourishment*, 2021, ink on watercolor paper. Image by *DARIA*.

Fude brush ink artist Akemi Tsutsui-Kunitake reflects on this, too, in her work Nourishment. With an illustrative composition of ink on watercolor paper, the artist shows a circle of figures seated around a ghostly drawing of a skinned fish spread out in the middle ground like a boney carpet. Each figure touches the carcass, displaying “the magic of food” as it ritually distributes ancestral voices, stories, traditions, and culture itself. [2]

On the left: a view of Courtney Ozaki’s *Inheritance Kitchen*, 2022, cupboard, food, spices, and mixed media;. On the right: text and image panels about Colorado’s Asian food cultures. Image by *DARIA*.

Despite the warm feelings many white Americans have for Asian foods, racism remains a culprit in spreading misinformation about Asian culinary practices such as the use and effects of MSG (monosodium glutamate). The flavor enhancer is used in a variety of foods from deli meats to canned soups, but it has been consistently blamed for headaches and other symptoms reported after consuming Chinese food. There is little clinical proof connecting MSG to these side effects though, and it is more likely the alleged sicknesses are rooted in a lack of critical exploration into Chinese food culture or scientific evidence, as well as discrimination. [3]

Thomas Yi, *MSG*, 2021, archival inkjet print. Image courtesy of the artist.

Drawing from this nuanced situation, Thomas Yi’s collage-like work MSG depicts a red background flocked with an erratic polka dot pattern of flattened piles of the additive, which resemble rectangular salt crystals when viewed up close. In the bottom and top sections of the field, bundles of flowers reach out toward each other, generating tension while reflecting on the media’s aestheticization of Asian culture. [4]

Sammy Seung-Min Lee, *BOLT DOWN: our narrative of food insecurity*, 2021, mural, paper, gouache, and acrylic varnish. Image by *DARIA*.

Similarly, Sammy Lee’s work explores the darker side of food in BOLT DOWN: our narrative of food insecurity. Lee features a small, wall-mounted section from the larger mural work, which was temporarily exhibited on the external wall of the Center for Visual Art in summer 2022. She also includes a photograph of the mural for context.

Made from Lee’s signature skin-like, handmade paper stretched over three-dimensional objects, the work is part mural, part sculpture and uses multicolored bolts cast from a bank vault to represent statistics from the 2021 Colorado Health Access Survey. That the bolts are derived from bank materials is substantial in that food shortages are inextricable from poverty. The artist emphasizes that as of 2019, “one in ten Coloradans experienced food insecurity, eating less than they felt they should in the last year, because they didn’t have money for food.” [5]

Grace Gee, *Precious Egg*, 2022, handmade and commercial papers, paper pulp, acrylic paint, thread, and colored pencil. Image by *DARIA*.

For some, providing their family with plenty of food is a self-soothing reaction to the trauma of food scarcity. Grace Gee conveys her mother’s experience fleeing from Japanese soldiers in China during World War II when Gee’s mother and brother were left with just a single rice ball and one hard-boiled egg to share. [6] The artist’s paper and embroidery work Precious Egg honors this experience. Using an accordion-style foldout of a repeated egg shape, the work depicts airplanes overhead, outlines of people running, and two figures huddled within the interior walls of a three-dimensional egg. Food, it seems, tells families’ stories as much as it holds space for history and healing.

Courtney Ozaki, *Inheritance Kitchen*, 2022, cupboard, food, spices, and mixed media. Image by *DARIA*.

A mixed media work from Raj Manickam’s series *State of the Spices*, 2022. Image by *DARIA*.

Other artists contributed to the exhibition’s vast and salient messaging, including Courtney Ozaki, whose Inheritance Kitchen uses a real cabinet with food objects and tools to show what an API kitchen might look like. Raj Manickam’s body of work titled State of the Spices demonstrates the relationship between historic spice trade routes and colonization. [7]

One photograph from Raj Manickam’s series *State of the Spices*, 2022. Image by *DARIA*.

In addition to probably leaving viewers hungry, this exhibition is a captivating source for information about and the documentation of Colorado’s cultural and artistic diversity. It isn’t all fondness and fuzzy feelings, though, like those left after a good meal, as it also points out API residents’ continuing struggles for equality. As always, art made by those experiencing this struggle soothes as much as it highlights and examines the nuances that only insiders can truly convey.

Danielle Cunningham (she/her) is an artist, scholar, and independent curator. She writes about science fiction, gender, sexuality, and disability, with an emphasis on mental illness. The co-founder of chant cooperative, an artist co-op, she holds a master’s degree in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Denver.

[1] Wall label, History Colorado Center.

[2] Akemi Tsutsui-Kunitake, artist statement.

[3] Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D., “ What is MSG? Is it bad for you?” Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/monosodium-glutamate/faq-20058196.

[4] Thomas Yi, artist statement.

[5] Sammy Lee, artist statement.

[6] Grace Gee, artist statement.

[7] Raj Manickam, artist statement.