In the book Art as Experience, John Dewey put forward the aesthetic experiences could be found in all of life. One of the latest community art projects of artist Annie Wan is Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, which is the Hong Kong House Project of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field in Japan presented and organized by the Hong Kong Art Promotion Office. She has stayed in Tsuna, where Hong Kong House is, for a five-week residency and it opened a cultural dialogue with food. She always thinks cooking and ceramics making are quite similar. Both food and ceramics, which carry cultural meanings, are intimate to us in daily life. The cooking process and the making process of ceramics are also similar. They are craft of material transformation by temperature to create new substances. The Echigo-Tsumari area is a rich land with food culture. I interacted with the local residents by sharing food and conducting interviews to collect stories about their relationship with food. Local resources were used and the public joined the project by participation and appreciation. She was trying to narrow the gap between contemporary art and the public.
Born in Hong Kong, Annie obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is now Assistant Professor of Academy of Visual Arts of the Hong Kong Baptist University.
Annie has participated in various local and overseas exhibitions. She was also awarded Artist of the Year in 2018 by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Winner (Sculpture) of the Philippe Charriol Foundation Art Competition, the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, “Artists in the Neighbourhood Scheme II” by the Hong Kong Art Promotion Office, the Overseas Residency Grant by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Award Winner of the Hong Kong Art Biennial. She has also been the resident artist at different art institutions in the USA, Japan and Denmark and invited as Guest Artist by Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Japan. Annie’s works are collected by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum and overseas art institutions.