Flowers from the table serves as the conceptual precursor to Inauthentic Kitchen. Setting aside the complex frameworks of consumerism, it begins with a more fundamental inquiry: beyond symbols and spectacles, what does food itself truly mean to us?
The project employs a photographic approach that integrates the compositional aesthetics of Dutch still-life paintings, informed by the Chinese banquet culture's practice of aestheticizing food to an extreme. Through digital collage, I reconstruct food and flowers into surreal visual objects. This creative act can be seen as a response to the Vanitas tradition of Dutch still-life painting. While the Old Masters used feasts and wilting flowers to contemplate eternity and illusion, we today must navigate through a haze of images to rediscover the most primal and genuine connection that food can offer. This is not merely an aesthetic exercise, but an intimate dialogue about what we truly need.