The Conch Girl Project is a visual, socially engaged project that utilizes cooking to co-nurture the mutual care for strangers in New York City. In a time of globalization, migration, and crisis, this project seeks to create experiential chances for healing kinship and emotional solidarity within a densely populated metropolis.

I migrated to New York City in 2021 from the opposite side of the globe. Dealing with my sense of displacement, I have been asking strangers to let me use their kitchen in solitude. In return, I cook them a meal. I started by putting out an online open call: a self-portrait of me in a classmate’s kitchen eating what I just made, and a paragraph of text that started with: “May I use your kitchen?” I ask for the least amount of face-to-face contact: I would arrive, cook, take photos, clean up, and leave. The kitchen owners usually leave the household or stay in another room during my visit. We usually won’t talk much, nor will we share the meal. After the visit, the resulting photos are sent to the kitchen owners, who are invited to make responses. These correspondences, along with the photos, will later be printed large and wheat-pasted on the green construction boards on the New York City streets, a public-facing, liminal space. The street publication is both a presentation and an open call that invites future collaboration.

The title “The Conch Girl” derives from a Chinese myth where a conch turns into a woman/goddess who takes on the secret nurturer role for a hardworking fisherman. The title is a name that bears the cruel tradition of marking domestic work as women's virtue. Though my project focuses on enacting radical care within a metropolitan setting rather than directly fighting against this structural injustice, The Conch Girl Project responds to my reality, which is inevitably informed and influenced by this tradition.

《田螺姑娘》是一个社会参与性的艺术项目。我于2021年从中国搬到纽约，在孤独、流离和错置感的冲刷下，我开始去陌生人家独自使用他们的厨房，为他们做一顿饭。我要求厨房主人与她保持最少量的面对面接触，他们通常会离开家，或者只呆在另一个房间里。我带着相机独自上门，在厨房里做饭、拍照、在借来的厨房里享受暂时的占有感和掌控感、打扫干净，然后离开。在这之后，我会把拍摄的照片发给厨房主人，请他们做出回应。这些图像和通信会被打成大幅海报，用浆糊张贴在纽约街头建筑工地的绿色木板上，直接面向公众。这些街头出版既是对项目的展示，也是新一篇公开招募，邀请更多的陌生人参与合作。


《田螺姑娘》通过图像和烹饪，在纽约市建立起陌生人间的情感关怀。在后疫情、全球化背景下迁徙和危机并存的时代，该项目在这个人口密集的大都市以介入式的艺术促进人与人之间的情感联结，探索彼此互相照护的方式。

《田螺姑娘》的命名自然而然地受到我成长背景的影响，尽管最初的神话背后是将家务劳动视为女性责任的传统，该项目指向的更多是当代都市生活中的激进关怀。同时，该项目在纽约的语境下，展示了一名中国女性如何用自身所识，去与更广大的世界联结。