Projects:
Rootless
2026
Mediums: Photography, Printing, Code
“Rootless” explores the intersection of how three different cultural identities have affected my understanding of identity explored through the lens of food. Starting from an experiences of childhood and sense of belonging having grown up, living and moving between German, Japanese and British cultures, I document the results of performative recollection, recreating the foods from my childhood in my current home. In this act my intention is to express and share something I am intimately connected to, acting as a catalyst for conversation and interaction, where the dining table is considered to become the foundation for grounding and belonging.
The intention of the project is further to explore these themes in relation to digital culture. Employing photography, coding, thermal printing and screen printing the process of making and materialising the work is designed to mirror how meaning shifts across different cultural contexts.
In this way, the specificity of details becomes lost, reinterpreted, the image becomes “poor” (in Hito Steyerl sense) in that it is fragmented and low quality. This deliberately acts against the richenss and certainty of a hegemonic cultural perspective, which often proliferates cultural narratives. For example one of the techniques employed copying receipt printing and method, to tie the materiality of the work to the experience of daily life.
The work is further influenced by the phenomenological work of Gaston Bachalard, and the idea of his poetics of space, particularly his conceptualisation of the intimate and homely, as a space through which to explore personal psyche. In all this work, the dinning table acts as the centre point onto which the narrative is performed. The dinning table is the foundation of this project as it situates the work within a space, it’s a place we exchange, time, ideas, feelings and food. Food acts as a device of cultural identity, when shared it becomes interpreted and understood/misunderstood and adapted.
The intention of the project is further to explore these themes in relation to digital culture. Employing photography, coding, thermal printing and screen printing the process of making and materialising the work is designed to mirror how meaning shifts across different cultural contexts.
In this way, the specificity of details becomes lost, reinterpreted, the image becomes “poor” (in Hito Steyerl sense) in that it is fragmented and low quality. This deliberately acts against the richenss and certainty of a hegemonic cultural perspective, which often proliferates cultural narratives. For example one of the techniques employed copying receipt printing and method, to tie the materiality of the work to the experience of daily life.
The work is further influenced by the phenomenological work of Gaston Bachalard, and the idea of his poetics of space, particularly his conceptualisation of the intimate and homely, as a space through which to explore personal psyche. In all this work, the dinning table acts as the centre point onto which the narrative is performed. The dinning table is the foundation of this project as it situates the work within a space, it’s a place we exchange, time, ideas, feelings and food. Food acts as a device of cultural identity, when shared it becomes interpreted and understood/misunderstood and adapted.