For the exhibition 'Mega Family—Imagining Home', participating artist Michelle Chan researched her husband's family recipes, tracing them back to the family's ancestral home in Shanwei, China. To document the linkage between family, food, and place, she photographed the ingredients as if they were landscapes, reflecting the complex idea of home we hold in our hearts.
In this workshop, Chan encourages participants to bring 1-2 ingredients from one of their favourite family recipes. Together, they will slowly observe and study these ingredients, learn methods of staging them, and take close-up food photographs. In the process, participants will explore how photography can create new perspectives on everyday objects, using the concept of 'shanshui' from Chinese aesthetics. The workshop will close with a group discussion about the group's photographic creations.
Michelle Chan is a relational artist who works primarily in photography. She uses the camera and manipulated images to generate connections and conversations with people. Her works often touch upon the notion of home, sense of belonging, human connections, bonding, and familial relationships. More specifically, they reflect the inherited familial beliefs that inform our daily gestures and rituals, and explore Chinese beliefs that have become recurrent over centuries. She is the founder of Phoboko, a platform that brings people together through photobooks. As a community, Phoboko interrogates photography as a medium, promoting the vision of local Hong Kong artists in dialogue with other photographers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Cantonese