Siew Guang Hong
 

Soyfed Beef–300grams is a suite of 5 photographic images of the artist’s anatomy – ranging from the bicep to pectoral and abdominal muscles – that masquerade as tofu packaging. Tofu is a soy product, and the pejorative label, “soy boy”, applies to those perceived to embrace a feminine gender expression, the correlation between soy and femininity resting on the (mis)conception that the presence of dietary estrogen in soybeans results in the diminishment of masculine traits. Siew remarks that the work “collapses the semiotics of the emasculated ‘soy boy’ and reflects on its connections to the Asian male body.”

Excerpts from curatorial essay by Louis Ho in Of placebos that sing sweet in the mouth and ache in the soul exhibition catalogue