This series emerges from two entangled social contexts. First, around 2009 the “Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia / Malaysia Truly Asia” tourism imaginary made “diversity” the nation’s calling card. Second, in 2014 Penang’s restrictions on foreign cooks in hawker centres sparked heated debate between the demand for “authentic taste” and the realities of migrant labour. Beneath the image of a food paradise lies dependence on global workforces and the everyday circulation of culture.

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makan makan 1 malaysia adopts the “menu” as both structure and metaphor: five pairs of circular panels—a larger portrait and a smaller dish—linked like a chain, at once recalling the act of ordering and tracing lines of migration. The roundels point to bowls, plates, and stall countertops, sending the gaze back and forth across multiple stations to form a shared—though not necessarily harmonious—public space. In the titles I juxtapose local and elsewhere (for example, “Vietnam—Ipoh Ho Fun,” “Sri Lanka—Penang Prawn Mee”), signalling recipes altered in transit. Identity here is not a fixed label but a process of ongoing translation, negotiation, and re-hybridisation.

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My earlier practice often used the dining table to observe how identities are negotiated in public space. This work extends that line, placing everyday commensality and the state narrative of “diversity” on the same table to expose their seams and tensions. The project originated as an institutional commission on “multiculturalism and shared space,” but was ultimately not presented after a curatorial shift—a detour that mirrors the gap between our imaginaries of diversity and its lived realities.