SERVICE: Illustration
INDUSTRY: Food and drink
PARTNERS: Asian Arts Culture & Trust, AsialiciousTO
AsialiciousTO is Toronto’s premier Asian food campaign program, showcasing diverse and delicious cuisines of Asia. For the 2022 festival, they work with Asian Arts Culture & Trust (AACT) to commission custom artwork from five local artists to promote the festival. I had the great pleasure of being selected as one of the artists!
I had the freedom to illustrate anything I felt captured my connection to food and the city. I knew immediately what I wanted to capture, and it was a feeling that I thought many other first generation Asian Canadians could relate to. This inspired me to name my piece, Saturday Afternoon:
My parents would visit various grocery stores across the city to find the ingredients to create the dishes they missed from their first homes in China and Vietnam – with two bored children in tow. After the careful selection of produce I didn't recognize, we'd enjoy a meal in a humble, no-frills food court. I'd long to be elsewhere, but today these food courts bring me back to those Saturday afternoons and evoke sentimental feelings of nostalgia. Food is a language that needs little interpretation, it transcends borders and differences. Whether it's a dish that reminds us of home or introduces us to somewhere new, it can be shared around the same table.
Let's make magic together!
Made with love © Steph Truong