Christina Nguyen next to her works
The newspaper said that inspiration came to Nguyen one weekend in 2017, when she was driving, listening to a Gucci Mane song and catching a glimpse of the sign for the Chinese restaurant Panda Express, famous for its lo mein (fried noodles). That's when the idea of combining hip-hop music and food sparked.
His debut, “Gucci Lo Mein,” a colorful illustration of the Atlanta rapper with a tattoo of Chinese egg noodles on his cheek, followed soon after. Nguyen also subtly incorporated Western pop culture images of the artist into dishes like Vietnamese vermicelli soup with crab.
But Nguyen didn’t stop there. As a Vietnamese-American born in Oklahoma and raised in Texas, Nguyen was exposed to a wide variety of foods and cultures. She says this broadened her horizons and helped her understand people from all walks of life.
According to Nguyen, it's great to have pride in one's culture and ethnic background, but sometimes we "don't really celebrate the intersections and similarities between cultures."
So in five years, Nguyen’s art store, Tiny Taste Maker, has sold hundreds of paintings and dozens of creatively designed brooches. Nguyen said that in the process, she learned more about the cuisines of several Asian countries such as Japan, China and Korea to further diversify her designs.
With her current success, Nguyen hopes to explore cuisines from more countries. According to her, art is a way to defuse racial prejudice, especially in places where hate crimes against Asians are out of control, such as Dallas, Texas.
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