Sidian Liu: The Conch Girl’s Cookbook, Issue 1

Description

The Conch Girl Project, which this zine documents, is a photo-based, socially engaged art project that Sidian started in 2022. The project utilizes cooking as a medium to foster mutual care among strangers, creating experiential opportunities for kinship and emotional solidarity  amidst the current climate of crisis. 

Sidian migrated to New York City in 2021 from the opposite side of the globe. Dealing with sense of displacement, starting from 2022, she has been asking strangers to let her use their kitchens in solitude. In return she cooks them a meal. The interaction is minimal: she arrives, cooks, takes photos, cleans up, and leaves, with the kitchen owners often absent or in another  room. The resulting photos and the correspondences with the kitchen owners are later printed  large and wheat-pasted on NYC's green construction boards. This street publication serves both as an art presentation and an open call for future collaboration, aiming to provoke  thoughts about the relationships between strangers, neighbors, and one another whom we rely on gesturing to a "careful society." You can find more information about this project on theconchgirlproject.com.

As a printed matter that documents The Conch Girl Project, Issue One documents the 6 kitchen visits that had been street published. The zine follows the narrative structure of a cookbook, presenting stories behind each kitchen visits.

About the Author

Sidian Liu (b. 1997, China) is an image-based artist, translator, and home builder. Her work focuses on possibilities of nesting and loving in a liquid society. She obtained her BA in English at Shanghai International Studies University in 2019, and her MFA in Photography at Parsons, The New School in 2023.