Have A Rice Day | 三餸一湯白飯任裝 (2022)

Alisan Fine Arts

My inaugural gallery solo show with Alisan Fine Arts, from 10 September 2022 to 15 October 2022.

The series showcase 24 reinventions of homemade dishes by my mother, aunt, and grandmother in the form of watercolour and acrylic pieces.

Alisan Fine Arts Press Release

Alisan Fine Arts is excited to announce the first solo exhibition for emerging Hong Kong artist Charlotte Mui at Alisan Aberdeen. For her inaugural exhibition, Mui will be showing a new series of paintings that were inspired by her mother and grandmother’s home-cooked dishes. The artist makes use of vibrant colours and personified food subjects on a circular paper canvas to depict her family delicacies such as steamed milk and coconut pudding , vegetable pot, and turnip cake. The title “Have a Rice Day” is taken from the local Chinese saying “Three dishes one soup and rice for free” (三餸一湯白飯任裝), resonating with the whimsical style of Mui’s work. This exhibition is part of Hong Kong Art Gallery Association’s Summer Programme which aims to promote young Hong Kong talent.

Mui’s unique visual representation demonstrates her identity as a Millennial artist, who combines pop culture, cartoon, and down-to-earth themes in the making of her Surrealist artworks.

Mui's popular Tarot card series received sell-out success last year at Alisan Aberdeen’s group show Chinese Surrealism which was as part of the French May Arts Festival Associate Project in 2021.

Artist Biography

Born in Hong Kong in 1996, Charlotte Mui is an emerging artist working mainly in watercolours and digital. Her work often reflects her own experiences, visions, and dreams while drawing inspiration from mythologies, art history, theatre, popular culture and home. Although Mui did not receive formal art training and instead studied English Literature and Art History at the University of Hong Kong, obtaining her BA in 2018, she has always enjoyed painting and as a child has won numerous international and local awards for her work. After a decade of painting competitively, Mui continues to search for her own voice and mode of expression. In 2020, she created her own deck of Tarot cards, “L’Œil de L’Âme Tarot”, which she uses exclusively for her fortune-telling endeavors. This series of Tarot cards was recently collected by Tate Library in the UK. This year Mui was selected to participate in HKWalls Mentorship Programme 2022, creating a mural which is currently on display at HK harbour waterfront.

Mui is currently working full time at Asia Art Archive.

Artist Statement

(Written as a letter to the visitors at the show)

Hello,

Thank you for being here, and for coming to see the show.

While the world was in lockdown, many of us turned to food and cooking for comfort — myself included. The sharing of food has always been a method for connecting with people, whether in person, or at a distance, and it stays true, no matter how big of a cliché it is. The power in cooking is that no matter who taught you a dish, made you something to eat, or simply emailed you a recipe, it is a reminder that at some point in time, someone somewhere cared about you.

‘Have a Rice Day’ is a surrealistic recollection and recording of my family’s recipes, featuring only the ingredients used to create them. It is an archive of our favourites and our go-tos; the stews by my aunt — who makes use of whatever she could find in the fridge; the rich baked goods my mum cooks up to comfort us on bad days; and the ridiculously fussy dishes that my grandma still loved to tell stories of. In other words, this series is a love letter to them, and a documentation of the dishes, before we forget how to make them.

This series was first conceived as a cookbook, as I witness the disappearance of traditional dishes alongside the rapidly changing cityscape. Food, to me, became an edible timestamp of our history, our culture, and through the passing down of recipes, our heritage.

Most of these dishes you see in this exhibition are not particularly remarkable, and you can find them on the dinner tables of any typical Hong Kong family. Yet, with just the addition of ginger, an extra tablespoon of sugar, or even the fact that a plate of pasta and soup is made specifically for Halloween each year (an actual family tradition) — these are the little things that change the taste and meaning of a dish entirely. The dish then becomes an intimate consumable that reflects the habit, experiences, preferences, and traditions of a person, a family, a community, and even a culture.

I wonder if a variation of these dishes show up on your dinner table?

I hope you’re doing well, both mentally and physically, as we recover slowly, and as we learn to breathe and share again.

Again, thank you for being here.

Your friend,
Charlotte