Offerings to Both Past and Future, 2018 – 2019

Still Life with Bitter Melons
Still Life with Citrus
Still Life with Berries
Still Life with Dragon Fruit
Still Life with Peaches
Still Life with Peaches and Nectarines
Still Life with Bitter Melon
Still Life with Lychee and Pomegranate
Still Life with Lychee

Chromogenic Print & Archival Inkjet Print
18 x 24”

For years after leaving home I’ve had a craving for some Chinese food taste that I haven’t been able to pin down. An absence that gnaws at sensation and memory. An undefined taste, not in the mouth but down some blind alley of the mind. The other day I was shopping in a Chinese food market and got curious about a large mound of Chinese white turnips…I asked a woman standing beside me on the edge of the crowd if she could tell me how the vegetable was used. She described the dish and I knew instantly I had found a lost taste.

Fred Wah
Diamond Grill, 2006

Offerings to both Past and Future feature different arrangements of both fake and real fruits and vegetables in bowls taken from the artists’ home and collection of family heirlooms. The work takes visual cues from still life paintings, bowls of decorative produce displayed in restaurants, offerings at shrines/temples and the tradition of gifting fruit. Here, fruits and vegetables are presented as tender jewels on delicate pedestals to chronicle sacrifice, care, affection and labour in the processes that bring them around the world and the methods in which they are consumed. Created as tributes, Offerings to Both Past and Future aims to sustain the collective memory of those in the afterlife and those in the present.

Cornucopias and Offerings to Both Past and Future are two components of Abundance, a project featuring sculptural, photographic, and installation-based works. Abundance positions fruit as a metaphor for the dreams and labour that extends across oceans and generations. The series looks at how we connect to the spiritual and natural world through the objects that we imbue with meaning.

Installation photos by Matthew Hayes. Abundance, Artspace Peterbrough, 2020. 

This project was made possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.