All her life illustrator Dingding Hu has traversed different cultures through food.

After the devastating Tangshan earthquake, her family moved from the northern province of Hebei to the southern city of Chengdu. With them they brought their love of dumplings, mantou (or steamed bread), and other carby comfort fare. But at the same time, Hu couldn’t help but develop a taste for huoguo (or hotpot) and other spicy dishes native to Sichuan province, and she found herself adapting to two cultures, one inside and one outside her home.

Thus began her journey of getting to know different cultures through foods. From juicy xiao long bao in her college town of Shanghai, to scrumptious crabs in Baltimore during graduate school, to “charming” bagels in her adopted home of New York.

Inspired by decorative art, Hu’s exhibition documented her journey and observations from around the world. Delightfully whimsical (and deceptively simple), her illustrations bring the everyday to life (and sometimes larger than life) and reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary. And they make us hungry.

About the artist

Dingding Hu is a New York-based illustrator. She loves drawing characters and making stories. She specializes in documenting daily life in a simplified modern digital style and presenting it with little surprises and humor.

She has created public art for the Museum of Chinese in America and the NYC Department of Transportation; stickers for Google Allo, an instant messaging mobile app; and illustrations for The New York Times, Lucky Peach magazine, and elsewhere. She has exhibited her work around the world and was the recipient of a silver medal from the Comic and Cartoon Annual Exhibit by the Society of Illustrators. In 2016 she started her own product line, a stationery and gifts collection that celebrates everyday life through food-themed illustration.

Learn more about Dingding in our interview with her and the story at Sinovision.