Celine Lee presents her reNOWn artwork, “A Mass.” Photo by Patrick de Veyra, courtesy of Now Now Canteen
For Now Now Canteen’s second installment of reNOWn, visual artist Celine Lee presents her two-piece artwork “A Mass.”
For many people in the Philippines, a meal isn’t complete without rice. From daily meals to special occasions, rice must be at the table, paired with different types of viands or ulam. Similarly, rice is a staple in Taiwan, taking various forms, including rice wine and glutinous rice. And for visual artist Celine Lee, who grew up with Filipino-Chinese culture, rice is “a part of us.” It’s no surprise then that when curator Patrick De Veyra invited Lee to be their featured artist for reNOWn, rice is the centerpiece of her artwork.
Defined as a cultural incubation program, Now Now Canteen’s reNOWn series explores the intersection of contemporary art and gastronomy, bringing together artists and chefs to collaborate on an exhibition. For its second installment, Lee presents her two-part artwork entitled “A Mass.”
Taking a pile of uncooked rice, Lee formed a landscape using the ingredient, then used photogrammetry to create 3D-rendered images of the subject. Then, in Celine Lee fashion, she created wireframes and shaded versions of the 3D model, which can be seen on the first layer of the artwork.
Along with the visual artwork comes a gastronomic experience, created by Now Now Canteen’s culinary team. In the four-course meal, they treated diners to different variations of rice dishes, while exploring concepts such as “height,” “width,” and “time.” Beginning with appetizers, they explored the concept of “height,” serving shrimp ceviche, taro dumpling, and rice noodle cannelloni, each perched on top of a metal platform of varying heights.
For the second course, they explored “time” through a sea floor risotto, which used varying types of seafood to represent time: local sea bass representing the “now,” as it is served fresh; then, the comfort scallops representing “later on,” as it is cooked a little bit more with confit and butter, and lastly, squid rice crackers representing the future, as this component of the dish was prepared days ahead. Completing the dish is a koji fishbone tuile with seaweed, cucumbers, and Now Now XO sauce.
The third course explores “width” with a Lu Rou Fan with textures of rice. A favorite dish of Lee, the Lu Rou Fan consists of Shio Koji pork, golden fried rice, mochi tamago, squid rice cracker, tapuy sauce, and fermented vegetables.
Before moving on to dessert, a fortune cookie is served as both a palate cleanser and as a gift to the diner. Inside the wafer dusted with kiamoy powder and kamias, there is a number that corresponds to one of the 190 fragments of Lee’s artwork. Each diner gets to take a piece of the mosaic home, gradually revealing the image of the landscape underneath.
Lastly, the four-course dinner concludes with a warm champorado flan, featuring burnt rice, buro, chocolate, rice molasses, red rice soil, and a milk meringue disk. The guest is invited to shatter the milk meringue disk on top to unveil the warm champorado flan underneath. The dessert is paired with Now Now Canteen’s take on Am, a rice milk that is the starchy water that results from boiling rice.
As each diner finishes their meal and takes home a fragment, smiles appear on their faces, with both their eyes and stomachs satisfied. For Lee, the entire experience embodies her feelings about consuming art. “I’m an image-maker. When we consume images, in the same way we consume food, it’s not just about taking,” she says. “We expend that energy. In the same way, when we see an image, we respond to it, and then hopefully we do something about it in a good way.”
By bridging food and art, a different dialogue is created, one that uses both the languages of gastronomy and visual art. Whether you understand one or the other better, reNOWn creates a space where guests can learn more about either form, and where artists and chefs can explore each other’s languages through collaboration.
reNOWn: Celine Lee will run from October 1-5, 2025. For reservations, visit nownow.ph.
