There's a particularly perverse pleasure in trying to find decent Chinese food in Northern Europe. The pleasure of searching for truly good diaspora cuisine – of holding courage in the face of near-certain failure – lies in the Ponzi-like conditions of believing that, somewhere in a land of potatoes and cream, there may be others who seek kindred pleasures in a wider spectrum of taste and texture.

For the diaspora subject, the supermarket might be a hyper-condensed coming-of-age drama, discovering new (hairy, gelatinous, penetrable) parts of yourself that you didn't know existed before. In the East Asian supermarket, this means day-to-day fare; essential condiments with a bias towards signature pungencies (chilli oil, black 151 bean, samba!); student cuisine (dumplings, ramen and hotpot broths, more chilli oil); colonial artefacts (luncheon meat); the Japanophilic snack section (pocky, mochi ice cream); the Hong Kong bakery section (surprisingly expensive).

As global diasporas have evolved, stores also need to tune into multiple channels, from second-gen home cooks to well-heeled international students living on their parents' dime. To satisfy all of these desires within a hundred or so square metres of floor space is a tour de force of supply chain logistics and psychogeography.

Hiền Hoàng’s Asia Bistro raids the diaspora supermarket for the erotics of the East Asian kitchen. Her images flirt between skins, starches, seaweed and saliva to congeal into a scene playful self-fetishisation. Like a drag show with kitchen ingredients, her tableaus playfully stage the two-sided nature of the diasporic gaze: simultaneously pleasurable and symptomatic, at once exoticising and embracing a world of oriental signification that is both deliciously alien and mundanely domestic.

This text is an excerpt of an article written by Gary Zhexi Zhang about Hiền Hoàng's project Asia Bistro originally published in Foam Magazine 63, Food, in 2023.

HIỀN HOÀNG is a multimedia artist from Vietnam and is based in Germany. Her artistic journey is characterised by pushing the boundaries of perception through diverse media—from experimental films to immersive installations. She holds a master's degree in photography and design from HAW Hamburg. Hoàng's exhibitions have been featured at prestigious venues, including Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center Budapest, Centro Cibeles Madrid, among others.

Living and working between London and Shanghai, Gary Zhexi Zhang is a visual artist and writer whose work explores systemic connections between cosmology, technology, and the economy. In 2023 he recently published Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023) and is currently working on a book about multipolar technoculture. In 2024, his solo exhibition, METAMERS, was presented at EPFL Pavilions and he exhibited in the 9th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung.