Khema Young-Hwa Cho

Instant Noodle Recycling Art

I am living in Vancouver, Canada as a first generation immigrant woman in my 40s from South Korea. I have never married and I am single, living with two cats in a shared house with three to seven different people in this house (depending on room occupancies of this rental house) All of my past and current roommates are not Korean but mostly Canadian born and raised citizens or immigrants from other countries. When I first moved into this shared house two years ago, I moved my living city from Toronto to Vancouver with two of my cats. In Toronto, the big metropolitan city that most people don't seem to care much of consuming synthetic chemicals and processed food, and I also wasn't very self conscious about my ethnic food consumption in that urban environment. However, after I moved to this house where my roommates at that time were in a quite strictly health conscious and environmentally friendly food consumption lifestyle, I often felt cringed and ashamed of my eating Korean processed food like instant noodle. Whenever I could sense a disdained look or funny comment on my meal choices or grocery shopping items from my roommates, I felt often torn.