The World Is Your Restaurant

The World Is Your Restaurant
2021 Nov
The Back Room KL (Kuala Lumpur MY)

Curated by Eric Goh; produced by Mutual Aid Projects and The Back Room

Research assistant: Sven Tang
3D animator: Darrel Chia Chee Sum
Graphic design: Tauras Stalnionis


List of works:

Commercial Marine Fish (Pelagic) of Malaysia
Acrylic on poster, 61 x 80 cm, 2021

Seafood Tools For The Sophisticated Home Chefs series
Acrylic on round stretched canvas, ⌀ 60 cm (2021–)

八鮮過海全魚宴 (Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea All Fish Banquet)
Single channel mpeg-4 video, 3:54 min, 2021

The World Is Your Restaurant (installation)
Banquet table with motorised lazy susan, cutlery, folded napkins, condiments, dimensions variable, 2021

Family Album
A collection of artist’s family snapshots (1970s - 2000s), 72 x 50 cm, 2021

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Press:


An art exhibition that looks at food as a marker of identity, social class (the Star)

Ever the keen observer of his surroundings, Hoo Fan Chon draws attention to the kitschy aesthetics of quotidian spaces to celebrate their visual idiosyncrasies. In his youth, he was occasionally treated to lavish banquets at Chinese restaurants in Kuala Lumpur by his father. Every aspect of a meal, from the decor to the plating of dishes, was indelibly imprinted on his mind. Naturally, Hoo turns to Chinese culinary and dining culture in The World is Your Restaurant—an exhibition that presents paintings, video, and installation art—to consider not only the gamut of the visual lexicon that lends the banquet its whimsical qualities, but also the historical development of the local Sino-foodscape alongside the economic rise of KL.

This exhibition frames the banquet as a site of what anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “gastropolitics,” where intricate social interactions unfold over the course of a meal. As a microcosm of the world, real and ideal, it serves as a stage for some to declare their social status and for others to perform their class aspirations. In the eighties and nineties, a thriving economy drew aspiring entrepreneurs from provincial towns and prized chefs from Hong Kong to the capital city. The resulting culinary boom widened the range of dining establishments where eager customers could forge new social ties and business deals.

Growing up in Pulau Ketam, a fishing village off the coast of Klang, Hoo has a special affinity with fish, which is a recurring motif in his artwork. In a banquet, fish is sought after for its nutritive and symbolic values. Here, Hoo scrutinizes its classification, plating, and cooking methods to reveal the class distinctions that operate under the veneer of taste as much as man’s domineering relationship with nature. The live food fish trade, which shows no signs of slowing down, is threatening the robustness of the maritime ecosystem. By treating the world as a boundless feast, the rapacious man hurtles it towards an imminent ecological crisis. It would appear that we devour ourselves, as we eat to our heart’s content.

Text by Eric Goh (from the exhibition’s press release).