Leftover Soup
Bone with Chinese Oracle Script and story of an International student surviving on bone soup. Survive might not be easy, but should be fun. I took cheap cow bone, make bone soup, and use the leftover bone to make jewelry.
As an international student all by myself, I struggle with finding cheap food sources to survive. I found frozen cow bone blocks in the superstore for soup, which are pretty cheap. To me, seeking nutrition from bone blocks is like urban “foraging”, where we relearn about the things we’ve forgotten of their edibility since we left the woods. After boiling the marrow out and drinking the soup, I figured the bone is also useful and I can make jewelry out of it.
I added seal script, an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that is still used in seal engravings, to my bone carving. This is my language, my culture, what I brought to this land.
I also added Mi'kmaq Hieroglyph, it is a form of the language to this land. I was able to survive and fit in Halifax in my first year in Canada thanks to Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre and Indigenous Student Centre at Dal, so I want to take this chance and frame it in my culture’s way. I hope my piece can reinforce the bond between Asian and Native peoples, which is not a widely amplified voice yet.
My piece contains Chinese seal script and Mi'kmaq Hieroglyph on bone with copper inlay. I wanted to use the most accessible material to build up this piece, because although to survive might be tiring, but it should be fun. As a traveller I want to survive happily anywhere, and this piece is my symbol of happily surviving. I might need to sleep 20 hours on airplane or live with 5 more international students in a small house, but whenever I stop, I can carve my bone blocks.
