Memories of family meals, recipes passed down through generations are crucial elements that shape identities and link us to our culture and roots. Food has also become central to individual identity, in that any given human individual is constructed, biologically, psychologically and socially by the foods he/she choses to incorporate. What we eat, the tastes we prefer, how we cook, and how we learn to cook makes up who we are. Preserving family recipes and passing them along honors ancestry and creates continuity through generations. It is a window through time.

Food act as a language and representation of emotions, culture and identity. Through personal narratives, food becomes markers of memory that connects the past and the present. It’s is one of those strange pieces of our identities that is both tangible and intangible–a form of living storytelling because it is constantly changing with each new generation, but also stays rooted in its origins.

Sparked by a memory over a family meal trying to recall a dish his grandmother would cook him when she was still alive, the artist depicts culinary histories of families through an art installation in Ato Bala Ang Ginaluto Nila Sang Una (Remember The Dish That They Would Cook) involving a series of 14 variable sizes of secondhand white porcelain plates hand painted with heirloom dishes from different families in Negros accompanied with handwritten  autobiographical narratives of each dishes from each families. The plates and handwritten notes are suspended through interwoven threads within an enclosed glass-cased modern wooden curio cabinet that explore ideas on memory, lineage, and the connections between internal and external composition of one’s identity.

Photos by Aeson Baldevia; Video by Matthew Piodena