Melanie Dunea
Amuse-Bouche
To create Amuse-Bouche, I was driven by the challenge of mixing fashion + food + photography + art,fields that often don’t overlap.
It took three years of toying with the myths, rules, realities of these separate disciplines and their strict boundaries. I pushed myself to feel free, open my mind, apply no preconceived rules and no compromises, which is in part why I also chose to self-publish this work.
When you page through, you see what looks like a Michelin-starred restaurant menu. Look closer — this isn’t a menu, it isn’t a fashion shoot or a food shoot. It is something different.
Go ahead and call it a book, a piece of art, an object. Any label or category works for me.
I used no AI (obvious to me but not to others); rather, I painted, shopped, dreamed, laughed, photographed, and wrote the entire collection by hand.
Food is communal, aesthetic and belongs to all of us. The core of this project is my invitation to join me in experiencing the sensual, temporal, organic and homemade. To continue to ask questions, looking twice, closer, laugh, and dreaming with me.
