Amal Flower Kay: Storytelling Through the Senses
For the last several years, Amal Flower Kay ’22, BFA Design History and Practice, has explored and combined two interests close to his heart: family history and using food as a medium to tell stories.
In his interactive project, there is love in me the likes of which you’ve never seen, Flower Kay uses videography and sensory experiences to evoke memories of his grandfather, who died when Flower Kay was eight years old. Participants in this live performance are invited to smell his grandfather’s ashtray and taste salad dressing made from his recipe, to the accompaniment of video clips of Flower Kay’s mother and grandmother talking about their memories of him. “I wanted to use this approach to create a piece that in a very broad context plays into this idea of reincarnating my grandfather,” explains Flower Kay.
Flower Kay’s thesis project, lack of memory is nothing, weightless, expands on this work and similarly uses food and film to explore ideas around family and culture. It centers on Flower Kay’s great-grandfather, who was born in India (in an area
that is now Pakistan) and emigrated to Thailand, and his annual ritual of reuniting with family and friends and sharing a meal. In this story, Flower Kay sees parallels to the experience of his grandparents, who emigrated from Thailand to the United
States in the 1960s. “There are overlapping stories about adapting to a new culture and deciding what parts of your identity you change and what parts you still hold on to,” says Flower Kay. By studying old family photos and learning about his family
history, Amal noticed how the generations before him would modify traditional recipes in their adoptive countries—preserving but adapting their culture to a new context.
In the new Design History and Practice program at Parsons, Flower Kay had the opportunity to explore and experiment with different means of creative expression, which helped him hone his studio skills and reconsider what is important in his work. Parsons also taught Flower Kay that he didn’t have to choose between his creative passions. “In my program, I could combine interests in art and food and create something that I was really excited about.”