Le Zhang 张乐
ABOUT
Le Zhang is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and freelance writer. With the matured skills of a designer and the insights of an anthropologist, she is dedicated to exploring material culture that crosses geographical boundaries and conducting investigations in a creative manner. Viewing design as a thought catalyst, her work encompasses multimedia content production.
After graduating from the Royal College of Art, she founded the cultural design studio Earth Buffet, focusing on geospatial food research, design, and investigation. She is also the co-founder of Outland Publishing Fair and the publishing group Aphakia. She now works as a researcher in Innovation Design at CAFA and as staff in the OTBT anthropology field school.
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Outland Publishing Fair
OTBT
Anthropology field work
2023-now
Tracing the potatoes in fields, market, and dinning table, I use it as the “open sesame” to understand the local food system and its relation to the global network. Potatoes in Malta exist in a context of glocalization. As an exotic crop, it has been embraced and loved by the locals. Meanwhile, due to climate differences, it has become a cash crop with export advantages. Potatoes circulate like currency on the lands of Malta and throughout Europe. Viewing the difference of transactions, the contours of society has delineated from the perspective of food. This includes the introduced crop in colonial times, the traditional of self-sustaining agricultural, and Malta's "surrogacy" food production model in relation to the European mainland.