New commissioned work for Fly By Jing x Our Place’s 2024 Lunar New Year collaboration.
Photography and prop styling: Stephanie Shih
Food stylist: Tyna Hoang
Digi/1st assist: Matt Harbicht
2nd assist: Jordan Dragojlovic
And here’s one of my concept sketches for the large still life scene:
Two person show: Asian Americana: Balancing Tradition and Modernity
1 Dec 2023–Jun 2024
https://www.ebpco.org/asian-americana
Asian Resource Center / Oakland Photo Workshop
310 8th St. Oakland, CA 94607
About the exhibition: “Asian Americana: Balancing Tradition and Modernity marries two powerful projects in a multimedia tapestry of art, culture, identity, and human connection. Zodiac Plants by Paulina Hoong and Open Flowers Bear Fruit by Stephanie Shih evoke memories and meditations on food, family, and
heritage, speaking to the hearts of the Bay Area’s diverse Asian
American community.”
This past spring/summer, I was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Museums at Washington & Lee in Virginia, making a new body of work with the Museums’ extensive Asian export ceramics collection. The new project, LONG TIME NO SEE, will debut in 2024.
Here’s an article about the residency and the collection, including snippets of interviews with myself, curator Elizabeth Spear, and director of the Museums Isra El-beshir: https://columns.wlu.edu/collection-connections/. So looking forward to getting to share the new work!
Solo show: Selections from 開花結果 OPEN FLOWERS BEAR FRUIT
1 May 2023–31 May 2024
Exhibition companion: https://openflowersbearfruit.com
McCarthy Gallery, Holekamp Hall
Museums at Washington & Lee University
” “開花結果 OPEN FLOWERS BEAR FRUIT” presents seven photographs from artist Stephanie Shih’s ongoing Asian American Still Life series that claims space for Asian diaspora cultural history and speaks to the cross-cutting of culture, commerce, and art in Asian, European, and American histories. As a second-generation Taiwanese-Chinese American, Shih explores themes of contemporary and historical cultural dynamics of the diaspora through her still life creations.
The title 開花, ‘open flower,’ is a Chinese phrase that means literally, ‘to bloom,’ and figuratively, ‘to succeed.’ Shih’s lush photographs evoke elaborate Dutch 17th century and other European still life paintings that are densely populated with flowers, as well as objects and foods made by Asian American artists that are significant to diverse perspectives and lived experiences in the AAPI communities. Shih’s compositions playfully invite viewers to mentally reach for a Chinese pineapple bun or a bite of Korean kimchi, and then demand a closer look that reveals layered meanings challenging the definitions of identity and celebrating the exuberance of the resulting Asian American experience. In doing so, the photographs appear defiant to the reminders of mortality so present in the Dutch still life paintings that the images mimic.
This exhibition is made possible due to the generous support of the Williams School, the Art and Art History department, and East Asian Languages and Literatures department. It was organized by senior curator of art, Patricia Hobbs.” –Museums at W&L
New work, on cookies and on coffee, for Los Angeles Times Food that ran this past February/March! Loved rounding up all the LA Times Food staff to make this chocolate chip cookie image.
