PROJECT TITLE
Orient Mart
Orient Mart
PROJECT CATEGORY
Exhibition, Packaging, Print
YEAR
2024Exhibition, Packaging, Print
YEAR
PROJECT DETAILS
Orient Mart is a fictional grocery store installation that examines both the negative and positive aspects of the Asian-American/Asian immigrant experience. With a focus on branding and packaging, this project shares stories and musings from my own tumultuous journey of accepting my Filipino identity and its intersections. Personal anecdotes featured on grocery store products make these intangible feelings and subjects–such as colonization, familial culture, and social justice–tangible to critique and celebrate the amalgamation of the Asian diasporic identity.
When I was growing up, the Asian supermarket was a comforting, nostalgic place with its familiar products and people, but also one that served as a reminder of how my community members have been made to feel out of place and othered. It took years for me to fully understand and be proud of my heritage, but acknowledging both the good and the bad was a key part in doing so. This project aims to use the supermarket and humorous parodies as vehicles to reclaim and raise awareness about derogatory stereotypes and histories.
The title “Orient Mart” was chosen to reclaim the term “the orient,” a historically derogatory term used by the West to refer to and exoticize the people, region, and cultures of East Asia. It aims to be a play on words that “orients” viewers with my personal views and life story. Coincidentally, it also is the first term that ChatGPT offers when you ask it to name an Asian supermarket.
Orient Mart is a fictional grocery store installation that examines both the negative and positive aspects of the Asian-American/Asian immigrant experience. With a focus on branding and packaging, this project shares stories and musings from my own tumultuous journey of accepting my Filipino identity and its intersections. Personal anecdotes featured on grocery store products make these intangible feelings and subjects–such as colonization, familial culture, and social justice–tangible to critique and celebrate the amalgamation of the Asian diasporic identity.
When I was growing up, the Asian supermarket was a comforting, nostalgic place with its familiar products and people, but also one that served as a reminder of how my community members have been made to feel out of place and othered. It took years for me to fully understand and be proud of my heritage, but acknowledging both the good and the bad was a key part in doing so. This project aims to use the supermarket and humorous parodies as vehicles to reclaim and raise awareness about derogatory stereotypes and histories.
The title “Orient Mart” was chosen to reclaim the term “the orient,” a historically derogatory term used by the West to refer to and exoticize the people, region, and cultures of East Asia. It aims to be a play on words that “orients” viewers with my personal views and life story. Coincidentally, it also is the first term that ChatGPT offers when you ask it to name an Asian supermarket.
