Hungry? Ceramicist Stephanie H. Shih creates Asian Grocery Items good enough to eat.

In recent years, there has been much debate in our current landscape of who should be allowed to make Asian food? Stephanie H. Shih spends hours painstakingly creating items typically found in an Asian-American kitchen pantry, as well as, folding hundreds of dumplings by hand to highlight "how a shared nostalgia can connect a diaspora”. 

Brooklyn based Shih follows a line of artists obsessed with grocery items. In 1962 Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup can and Claes Oldenburg’s Floor Burger repositioned these items in our aesthetic. Unlike those artists who focussed on mass production, Shih wants to highlight the importance that the kitchen plays on Asian communities family life, where she remembers collectively folding dumplings with her family members.

The concept of Shih's hyper-realistic ceramics have evolved quickly with many first-generation Americans rushing to purchase one of Shih’s objects based on 80’s and 90’s brands most commonly found in the house.

Shih is surrounded by contemporaries utilising food sculpture to bring Asian-American heritage into the conversation. Annie Shen is one example, who creates food sculptures that juxtapose her Taiwanese-American background, where adjoining plates hold items such as Hamburgers alongside Bao buns.

Shih is hopeful that other first-generation children balancing dual identities will see her work and recognise themselves in each piece, “This is ours and it’s just for us.”

Unagilife thanks Stephanie H. Shih who is busy preparing for her upcoming exhibitions for the information and photographs for this article. 

You can see her work currently at THE CHINATOWN COLLECTION, Care of Chan, New York, NY (closes 2/29) and at her upcoming exhibition MAKING IN BETWEEN, American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA (opens 3/14).