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Story Entry

Superposed Tongue

SiSi Zhang

2026

Materials: Rice, incense, rice steaming cloth

Workplace language, ritual materials, and food merge into a disorienting overlap of home and labor.

Working in a Japanese onigiri shop requires a precise choreography of care and language that differs from my domestic life. By bringing the non-native multilingual phrases I repeat daily at the workplace into the gallery space, I aim to visualize the gradual osmosis of spaces, where linguistic boundaries and fixed identities soften. The incense functions as a ritual gesture, activating this overlap of environments. As the phrases burn, their residue is transferred onto the rice I eat and serve both at work and at home. The marks left on the rice persist as a lingering exhaust, slowly permeating the languages, spaces, and food that sustain my body, until speech, place, and nourishment begin to merge across work and home, and the body becomes disoriented.

LANGUAGE TASTES LIKE LABOR

LANGUAGE TASTES LIKE LABOR

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