Birthday

Frankfurter Kranz, Germany April 24, 1999

Slagroomtaart, Netherlands April 24, 1998

Birthday is an exploration of an interpretation of a birthday tradition. Growing up in an American culture without a strong, common tradition surrounding the anniversary of our births, has always left me feeling slightly disappointed on my birthday.

In an attempt to explore and better understand what it feels like to have a strong birthday tradition, I fabricated a tradition for myself by imaging that I traveled to a different country each year on my birthday to eat their traditional birthday or celebratory dish. I then created a catalogue of the food items I pretended to have eaten. To create boundaries and structure in my work, I used my grapheme-color synesthesia (my perception of numerals and letters is associated with the experience of colors) to determine the background and foreground colors.

Color key:
0. White
1. Black
2. Pink
3. Lime green
4. Cobalt Blue
5. Red
6. Dark brown
7. Yellow
8. Dark blue
9. Medium brown