Food is Love II

2022
Collages
Collage with Phototransfer, Linoleum Block, and Screenprint Elements on Hanji Paper.
25 x 18 inches

This mini series, Food is Love, celebrates my love for cooking for my chosen family, preparing plant-based foods using ingredients that Earth Mother gifts to me. Beginning in 2021, I began working on various art pieces about my ancestral relationship to food, which greatly evolved during the pandemic. Since I was a kid, I loved to prepare foods in the kitchen. As I grew and left home for college, I took my family’s recipes with me and created new ones that were a hybrid of my Peruvian culture and the Mexican culture I had grown up with. I saw myself as a culture keeper of food wisdom.

My friends and family who have tasted my food over the years will tell you that it’s been an amazing and delightful experience. I pour my love into my food. I view food as a pathway for healing. I try to connect with each ingredient. I love to know where the seeds, spices and vegetables come from. I try to imagine what it was like for ancestors to come up with unique dishes that I get to recreate today. I feel that particular ingredients awaken parts of our bodies that allow us to remember and heal. I like to think of myself as a messenger for those food elements that I combine to create intense mouth pleasure! These works represent the joy I feel when I facilitate pleasure for others via food.