Sea Chicken
My mother immigrated to the United States from Japan in the year 1993 when she was 35 years old. She moved from the mega-city Tokyo, home of Tsukiji, the biggest wholesale fish market in the world to Plainsboro, New Jersey, a township with many grocery stores and few fresh fish markets. An avid cook adapting to a new world, she began to substitute chicken for fish in her cooking. Chicken, though different from fish in texture and flavor, was both more accessible and more affordable. Her unique adaptations blurred cultural and culinary boundaries and also helped to define mine and my two brothers’ taste and relationship to both Japanese and American cuisine. Sea Chicken is a collage of imagery comprised of both fish and chicken features. Beaks, feathers, fins, and eyes are merged in a jacquard woven table runner, paying homage to my mother’s journey from Tokyo to Plainsboro.
Featured in the Rossana Orlandi Gallery of the 2018 Salone de Mobile Milano in Milan, Italy as part of the SAIC whatnot Collection.