Goya Can

Jennifer Goya
Goya Can, 2008
Animation
3 seconds

Goya Can is an animated GIF self-portrait. The can’s facade mirrors a certain famous brand of food, replacing its canned contents with a lesser known vegetable (bitter melon) known as ‘goya’ in the Okinawan dialect. The packaging and selling of ‘Goya-Bitter Melon’ is in reference to the occupation of Okinawa by the U.S. military for over five decades. The perversion of marketing an exotic vegetable symbolize the normalcy of colonialism.