初次看到藝術家雷鷺的作品是受到策展人張小芮邀請在2025首屆未來藝術節：遙感未來起居展覽上看到的

First saw the works of artist Lei Lu’s at the Future Art Festival 2025: Remote Sensing Future Living Exhibition, invited by curator Ree

雷鷺的 “菜單” 系列作品，是一場對日常飲食的溫柔解構 —— 當肉骨茶的湯色漫過餐盤邊緣，當海南雞飯的油光映出社會規訓的影子，那些標注著 “Singlish”“Safe space” 的 “食材欄”，與散落著身份叩問、權力反思的 “做法欄”，共同構成了一張張未完成的對話切片。

Dining as a Prism of Dialogue: Cultural Fluidity and Cognitive Rifts in Lei Lu’s performance series

Lei Lu’s This is Illegal in Singapore Recipe Relics (Diam Leh) (2023 - ) series is a tender deconstruction of everyday cuisine—where the broth of bak kut teh spills beyond the plate’s edge, where the sheen of Hainanese chicken rice mirrors the shadows of social conditioning. The "Ingredients" column, labeled with terms like “Singlish”and “Safe Space”, and the "Method" section, scattered with reflections on identity and power, together form a collection of unfinished conversational fragments.

這些 “菜單” 里，“食材” 不再是蔥姜蒜椒，而是參與者的文化基因：“Singlish” 暗涌著新加坡多元文化的混血特質，“No onions”（海南雞飯欄）藏著個體飲食偏好，更折射出文化禁忌的隱線。而 “做法” 欄里的碎語 ，如 “社工人為何成了規訓的符號？”“控制欲與焦慮如何在暴力中滋生？”，則將飯桌上的即興思辨，凝固成社會結構的解剖圖。雷鷺以食物為誘餌，釣出了人們潛藏的身份困惑、家庭創傷與權力叩問 —— 肉骨茶注釋里 “福建草本湯” 與 “胡椒豬骨湯” 的認知錯位，戳破了文化根源的曖昧假面；糯米雞 “自學烹飪” 的敘述，暗涌著家庭情感真空的漣漪；咖喱雞對脫口秀邊界的探問，讓餐盤邊緣生長出語言權力的荊棘。

In these "recipes", the ingredients are no longer just scallions, ginger, garlic, or peppers but fragments of cultural DNA: Singlish hints at Singapore’s hybrid multiculturalism, while No onions (under Hainanese chicken rice) conceals personal dietary quirks and, more subtly, the invisible threads of cultural taboos. Meanwhile, the fragmented musings in the "method" section — questions like why have social workers become symbols of conformity or how does control and anxiety breed violence — freeze dinner-table debates into dissections of social structures. Lu uses food as bait to lure out latent identity crises, familial wounds, and power dynamics. The cognitive dissonance between bak kut teh’s “Hokkien herbal soup" and "peppery pork bone broth" punctures the illusion of cultural origins; the narrative of self-taught cooking in glutinous rice chicken ripples with the void of familial warmth; and curry chicken’s probing of stand-up comedy’s boundaries sprouts thorns of linguistic power along the plate’s rim.

生于中國、輾轉新加坡與歐洲的成長軌跡，賦予雷鷺天然的 “流動觀察者” 視角。她既是飯桌上的參與者（與陌生人共飲一碗肉骨茶湯），又是局外的記錄者（將對話蒸餾成藝術符號）。這種雙重身份，讓她捕捉到對話中最微妙的裂隙：印尼移民后代說 “從未覺得漂泊” 時，文化歸屬的悖論已悄然浮現；食客念叨 “食堂雞飯再也吃不出舊味” 時，記憶與現實的齟齬已凝成嘆息。這些裂隙里，藏著全球化時代最普遍的生存困境 ——我們以食物錨定身份，卻發現 “家鄉味” 早已被生活篡改；我們試圖用飲食連接他人，卻在對話中撞見社會規訓的陰影。

Born in China and raised in Singapore and now based in Europe, Lu embodies the perspective of a fluid observer—both a participant at the table (sharing bak kut teh broth with strangers) and an outsider archiving dialogues (distilling conversations into artistic symbols). This duality allows her to capture the subtlest fissures: when a descendant of Indonesian immigrants says I’ve never felt adrift, the paradox of cultural belonging surfaces; when a diner murmurs the canteen’s chicken rice doesn’t taste the same, the friction between memory and reality crystallizes into a sigh. Within these rifts lie the universal dilemmas of globalization—we anchor our identities in food, only to find "homely flavors" altered by life; we seek connection through dining, yet collide with the specters of social conditioning.

更動人的是，這些 “菜單” 從未閉合：當觀眾凝視肉骨茶的湯色，有人看見文化根源的掙扎，有人想起外婆的草藥湯，有人追問 “何為家鄉”。雷鷺將對話的開放性交給觀眾，使每一道菜都成為 未完成的思想劇場—— 食材欄的身份標簽是劇本伏筆，做法欄的思辨碎片是臺詞草稿，而觀眾的人生體驗，才是最終的演譯者。

What’s most striking is that these "recipes" remain perpetually open. As viewers gaze into bak kut teh’s broth, some see struggles of cultural roots, others recall grandmother’s herbal soups, and still others ask, “What defines home?”Lu entrusts the audience with the openness of dialogue, turning each dish into an unfinished theater of thought—the identity markers in the ingredients column are plot hints, the reflective fragments in the method section are draft scripts, and the viewers’ lived experiences become the ultimate interpreters.

最終，雷鷺的 “菜單” 是一場關于 “人如何棲居于文化與社會” 的默劇。餐盤里的食物不再只是果腹之物，而是盛滿了身份的流體、記憶的褶皺與權力的回聲。當湯匙與碗沿相擊，那些藏在 “肉骨茶是胡椒味還是草藥味” 里的困惑，那些隱于 “食堂雞飯消失” 中的遺憾，都化作了全球化時代里，每個人都逃不開的生存叩問 ——我們以食物為鏡，照見的不僅是味蕾的記憶，更是自身與世界的復雜糾纏。

Ultimately, Lei Lu’s This is Illegal in Singapore (Diam Leh) Relics is a silent play about how we inhabit culture and society. The food on the plate is no longer mere sustenance but a vessel brimming with fluid identities, the creases of memory, and echoes of power. When the spoon clinks against the bowl, the doubts buried in whether bak kut teh should be peppery or herbal and the regrets hidden in “[t]he canteen’s chicken rice is gone” transform into existential questions no one in this globalized era can escape. We hold up food as a mirror—reflecting not just the memories of our palates, but the intricate tangle of ourselves and the world.

——人民美術網 藝術總監

中國通俗文藝研究會理事 

李家夫（冰承）

2025年6月10日北京

—By Li Jiafu (Bing Cheng)

 Art Director, PeopleArt

06/10/2025

雷鷺（生于1999年）是一位居住在倫的新加坡藝術家。她于2023年畢業于皇家藝術學院當代藝術實踐碩士學位，并于 2022年在英圍金史密斯大學獲得一等（榮譽）美術學位。她最近的作品展覽包括在倫敦菲茨羅維亞畫廊舉辦的個展【非慰籍美食】（2024年）、以及在杭州 Imaginary 乙舉辦的“室外積雪如山”展覽（2023年）。她還為倫敦大學東方與非洲研究學院（SOAS）的 Movement Beyond Limit（s） 等研究課題小組討論做出了貢獻.并且她的作品與展出在《Fad 雜志》和《MilkTeeth》等平臺上被發表過專題報道。

Lu (b.1999) is a London based Singaporean artist. She graduated MA Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2023, and with a First Class (Hons) Fine Art at Goldsmiths University in 2022, United Kingdom. Recent exhibitions of her work include solo exhibition Discomfort

Food （2024）at Fitzrovla Gallery, London, and 盡管室外積雪如山（2023）at Imaginary Z, Hangzhou, China. She had also been invited to and contributed to panel discussions, such as Movement Beyond Limit(s) at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and have been featured in platforms including the FadMagazine and MilkTeeth.

責任編輯：麥穗兒