VAAAM is a collaborative effort in scholarship and resource and collections sharing on Asian American Art. This effort has taken several years in the making with many collaborating scholars, curators, artists, collectors, museums, and other institutions and organizations. The Terra Foundation for American Art through its Art Design Chicago initiative has been a major supporter of this project and has enabled the first original research and scholarly content to be created for the museum.
We are delighted to be able to host the special exhibition Word of Mouth: Asian American Artists Sharing Recipes, curated by Laura Kina and Jave Yoshimoto, featuring the original recipes and stories of 23 Asian American and Asian diasporic artists from across the US. The curators note that the cookbook was a reponse to the inflamed Anti-Asian violence taking place during the Spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. The cookbook features the original recipe illustrations by the curators Kina and Yoshimoto as well as contributing artists HyeGyeong Choi, heather c. lou, and Mia Matlock.
“Each recipe comes with a backstory from the artist reflecting how their Asian American cuisine has been impacted by histories of war, migration, relocation, labor, and mixing and how we have used food to care, connect, build, and sustain diverse communities in our personal lives and artistic practices. Along with each recipe, is a featured artwork and the artist’s bio. The artists included in this book represent a diverse range of emerging, mid-career, and established artists.” — From Word of Mouth: Asian American Artists Sharing Recipes, Laura Kina and Jave Yoshimoto
Please also take a close look at the Asian American Arts Activism Relational Map curated by Yvonne Wong with Alexandra Chang. Please fill out the form to add information to this ongoing mapping project. You can also fill out a form to embed the mapping project into your own project!