Okonomiyaki in USA
—
2025
8 x 8 in
24 pages
Risograph on paper
Archival pigment print on paper
Handmade single edition
Okonomiyaki in USA is a hand-crafted artist book that reinterprets foods I have come to love in America through the structural logic of Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. In this method, ingredients are carefully layered rather than mixed, allowing each element to retain its identity within a unified whole. I use this structure as both form and metaphor, where each page becomes a layer and each paper-cut image marks time spent in a once unfamiliar place.
The project was inspired by a friend who ran an okonomiyaki restaurant in Korea, a Korean Japanese man from Hiroshima whose quiet discipline later became meaningful to me through my experience as an immigrant.
The foods in the book, including kale, dolma, falafel, American birthday cake, and potato chips, were once foreign to me. Through cutting and layering paper, I translate adaptation not as assimilation but as accumulation.
I often communicate through objects rather than words. This work becomes a quiet narrative of migration through making.
The book is a single hand-crafted volume where text and image are integrated throughout, reflecting a personal approach to belonging and construction.