ANAS CHAO

Restaurants and street food stalls give us a sense of home, reaching beyond our families and houses. Every meal we buy reconnects us with familiar tastes, people, and places, refreshing our memories of where we belong. But memories fade as we experience new things in life, turning home into a fleeting feeling.

This work is presented in the form of public interactions and an installation. Through stories of restaurants that felt like home, I share my search for belonging as I move from one place to another. With increasing work trips to Milan, I invite visitors to take me to their home-like restaurants. With these shared meals, I connected with new people and places — forming new memories of a temporary home.

The installation showcases fabric with needle felted patterns, and ceramic plates with stories written on them. The texture of fabric is how I materialise memories — soft and vague, yet deeply piercing into my identity. Ceramic plates reflect my attempt to grasp onto these fading memories, by transferring them onto a concrete object.

Visitors are asked to share their home restaurant stories through conversations, or by filling out forms available on site. Together with the meals that I share with visitors, I’m able to create an archive of home restaurants, giving possibilities to further extend this project in the future.

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Click here to read all stories written on the plates, and click here to watch the promotional Instagram reel for the exhibition.