Sushi Merguez: Fast food, gender roles, and transculturalism in question

• Autor(es): Cohen, Emmanuel
• Data: 2025
• Origem: Diffractions
• Assunto(s): performance art; transculturality; Tsuneko Taniuchi; audience participation; fusion food; fast food
• Tipo de Documento: Artigo científico
• Idioma: Inglês

Descrição

Following the recent turn of contemporary artists towards food as a catalyst to question the restrictiveness of concepts such as identity and community, this article discusses how Franco-Japanese performance artist Tsuneko Taniuchi uses edible art to critique sociocultural traditions related to hospitality and art consumption. More specifically, her Micro-Event N°6 bis/ Fast Food, challenges notions of food as nationalistic cultural expression via the public preparation of unexpected combinations of ingredients, the “sushi merguez,” as well as assumptions regarding her identity as an Asian woman in this role. Pointing to multiple migrant culinary heritages in France, this recipe and its performance (and many reenactments) have evolved towards more inclusive activities where guest performers are invited to reinvent their version of sushi merguez to express their personal history.   Mixing Barthes’s psychosociological approach to food with performance study theories as well as politics of spectatorship, the article investigates the way this participatory script breaks cultural boundaries, triggers reflections on identity politics and national identities, while using the culinary event as an unorthodox type of mediation in the museum setting.