The idea of my project is inspired from my curiosity about fortune cookie: Everyone think that fortune cookie is a kind of Chinese dessert, but almost no one knows that fortune cookies was invented by American and has not relationship to any traditional Chinese foods. I find that culture difference can literally make some interesting misunderstandings like fortune cookies, these misunderstandings can also represent some stereotypes toward a country.
During the research, I found that people from different cultures always label people from other cultures and inaccessible to break down stereotypes. These cultural misunderstandings are sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. they can manifest themselves in many details of daily life. You can easily feel them, but it’s hard to explain them.
In my view, food is obviously a part of everyone’s life, and there are lots of misunderstandings about food in different countries. I think food can be a strong symbol of culture misunderstanding, so I decide to choose food to show my idea of culture misunderstanding. Basic on this purpose, I developed an independent illustration magazine, which is made up of a series of foods’ portrait and labels that representing different stereotypes to different countries. Based on the visual style set during the creative process, I also produced a series of visual derivatives.
It is obviously that in this world, there are endless cultural misunderstandings, not only the 20 described in this magazine. I hope that readers of this magazine can realize this fact and begin to consciously avoid using stereotypes to judge a person, so I name this magazine >20.
