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Celine Wong

Traces of Aftertaste Mapping Motherhood: The Mama Archive


ToGather Design Lab



I am Celine, a designer‑researcher with a foundation in interior design, and my practice extends into emotional and communal storytelling. I develop interventions that preserve voices and evoke reflection, exploring how everyday food sustains memory and strengthens community ties.

As a curator of emotional connections, I position design itself as a method of inquiry, revealing how everyday food acts as an anchor of emotional resonance while artefacts become carriers of collective memory and reflection. Through this approach, I bridge people through food, transforming ordinary experiences into records of joy, comfort, and familiarity that nurture lasting community bonds.






The visual food sheet invited community members to place emotional color stickers, revealing both their preferences and the layered emotions tied to everyday foods. This process mapped how dishes embody joy, comfort, memory, and familiarity.
Residents of Sembawang Crescent collaboratively mapped familiar places and daily routes. The activity fostered dialogue and connection while documenting community rhythms, shared spaces, and everyday paths that reveal the lived texture of the neighbourhood. 
The Like & Dislike sheet invited residents to share food preferences creatively, using both writing and drawing. This dual approach allowed them to express emotions and stories visually as well as verbally, making their thoughts on food more personal and engaging.
The Pleasant–Unpleasant chart asked residents to place foods along a spectrum of feelings. What began as a one‑to‑one conversation grew into shared reflection among seniors, fostering dialogue, emotional connection, and stronger community bonds. 
At the exhibit, communities reviewed their worksheets and charts, recognising shared connections. Seeing their own words and visuals reflected, many discovered new sides of their friends, deepening understanding and strengthening bonds through everyday food practices. 
The card deck, filled with residents’ voices, made the community feel heard and connected. Through everyday food, it became a collective record of belonging and resonance. 


Traces of Aftertaste
ToGather Design Lab



A video showcasing the accumulation of engagements in the Sembawang and Yishun communities is available here.



 This project investigates how everyday food carries emotional meaning and sustains connections within communities. By focusing on repetition and familiarity, it reveals how ordinary acts of eating and sharing become anchors of joy, comfort, memory, and belonging. Food is never just sustenance; it is a medium through which emotions are expressed, habits are formed, and communities find resonance in shared routines.

The research begins with the premise that familiar foods evoke emotional connections not only for individuals but also across generations. Through community engagement, residents were invited to reflect on their everyday food practices, revealing how simple dishes - such as porridge and chicken rice carry layered meanings. These foods are accessible and ordinary, yet they hold emotional weight because they are repeated, remembered, and shared. They become emotional anchors precisely because of their everyday presence. 

The framework guiding this study is built around four emotional themes: Joy, Comfort, Memory, and Familiarity. Rather than privileging one emotion, the project demonstrates how they coexist and overlap. A single food can embody multiple meanings at once, shifting across contexts and age groups. For example, chicken rice may be joyful and comforting, while fishball soup may be rooted in social memory. These overlaps highlight how food anchors emotional layers that evolve with time and experience. 

Through design interventions such as card deck prompts, worksheets and food charts, participants were enabled to express their feelings both visually and narratively. These tools provided space to map likes, dislikes, and emotional responses in ways that felt comfortable and engaging. A deck of cards that is filled with captured community voices, together with a reflective publication, maps emotional themes and transforms lived experiences into records of resonance—co-facilitated sessions with members of the community, created spaces where voices can be gathered and reflected upon.

The research positions design itself as a method of inquiry. Iterative making and thematic mapping allow food and gesture to emerge as anchors of emotional memory, turning artefacts into interventions and objects into carriers of collective reflection. Together, these outcomes form a coherent narrative that demonstrates how design can move beyond aesthetics to become a medium of emotional connection, communal storytelling, and collective resonance across generations.