Living Here

Stephanie Shih
Dad's Favorite, Mondays, 2023
Archival pigment print on bamboo paper, plexiglass, vintage frame, resin, vintage wood stand
Courtesy of the artist

This work is on loan for the exhibition, Living Here, at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, June 20 - December 20, 2025.

Shih collaborated with the Museums at Washington and Lee University in southwest Virginia to mine their Collection of Chinese Export Porcelain and create the series of works that includes Dad’s Favorite, Mondays and Gilding the Lily/Corn Soup. Choosing from a range of almost 3,000 Chinese-made ceramics, she used historical research to connect them to Europe and Asia before drawing on her own presence in contemporary America to bind everything together.

For Dad’s Favorite, Mondays, she chose a 17th-century mustard pot. Considering the diasporic histories of both mustard and its culinary partner ketchup, she observed that the yellow-flowered mustard plant (visible in the photograph) is native to Eurasia, a region of cultural exchange and trade between Europe and Asia. Ketchup has its origins in Chinese fish sauce from Southeast Asia. After centuries, the ancient fermented substance was transformed by an ingredient from South America—the tomato. “Nowadays, both condiments are quintessentially American toppings for hot dogs,” she writes, “which I grew up eating at Costco food courts when my dad would, like many frugally-minded immigrant parents, make his weekly shopping pilgrimages there every Monday.”