Kristina Wong, a performance artist who also goes by the descriptors comedian, writer, actor and Guggenheim Fellow, has found unlikely inspiration in food banks.
In March 2025, she premiered her solo show, #FoodBankInfluencer, after becoming acquainted with a hunger relief agency in Los Angeles. The more she learned about the sector, the more she started asking the same questions that also bedevil many food bankers, such as: Are food banks trying to end food insecurity, or becoming permanent institutions that manage it?
The show features a dramatized version of Wong as she naively but enthusiastically explores food insecurity and the emergency food system, only to discover their complexity—and a food banking system she concludes is more focused on outputs than root causes. Asked whether she’s critiquing or celebrating food banks, Wong said, “I want to say it’s not either.” Echoing the ‘We can’t food bank our way out of this’ phrase commonly heard in food banking circles, she said: “I’m critiquing the circumstances that have led us to be complacent that food banks are the only answer.”
Wong’s dive into food banking began in 2019, when she wandered into the welcoming storefront of World Harvest Charities and Family Services in Los Angeles, unaware it was a charitable organization. In addition to clothing and household items, World Harvest provides carts filled with groceries and other essentials in exchange for a $50 donation or four volunteer hours. After returning to volunteer, Wong was overwhelmed by its generosity. “It just feels like you’ve won a freaking lottery every second,” she said.
Wong’s path from food-bank fan to #FoodBankInfluencer grew out of her mutual-aid work. During the pandemic, she helped launch the Auntie Sewing Squad, a national face-mask-sewing network, through which she connected with organizers in the Navajo Nation, an area widely regarded as a food desert. In 2022, Wong entered a three-year Arizona State University residency, intending to develop a project that could help the Navajo organizers establish a food bank like World Harvest. She soon realized she was unprepared to undertake that commitment in a remote community whose nuances she did not understand, and her focus shifted to broader questions of food access.
Research visits to food banks in the Tempe/Phoenix area were informative, Wong said, but Andrew Fisher’s book, Big Hunger, gave her project its critical framework. Fisher’s critique of the close ties between corporations and food banks “turned a lot of the lights on,” she explained.
Wong still needed a way to avoid a show that felt like reading “a graduate paper” on stage. She began rewriting popular song lyrics and singing them as karaoke as an exercise. “Five songs in, I was like, I think this could be the show.”
At the show’s heart is Wong’s belief that food banks should work to put themselves out of business. “I can’t tell sometimes when I see the fundraising campaigns if their goal is to just become bigger and bigger and bigger, or really get to a place where we can close up our doors,” she said. “I feel every nonprofit should be working toward their own obsolescence.”
For Wong, this means “real advocacy that gets to the root causes” and wraparound services that both feed people and create community. Still, she acknowledged, “That’s a lot to ask. I know there’s so much work involved in just distributing food, making sure it leaves the warehouse in time, making sure it gets to different routes.”
Wong says most food bankers who have seen the show have enjoyed it. She has presented one-off performances in San Francisco, Tempe, Ariz., and Fairfield, Conn., and longer runs in Boston, New York City, and Portland Ore. The Oregon Food Bank invited her to perform during a volunteer shift, as volunteers packed potatoes. Despite performing at the food bank, Wong says #FoodBankInfluencer is best performed onstage. Its next run is scheduled for Los Angeles in spring 2027.
Ultimately, Wong hopes, “I would love for the show to be like, there used to be a thing called food banks … but we don’t have those anymore. I’d like to get to a place where everyone has enough. To me, it’s how do I make this issue I’m addressing completely obsolete?” – Amanda Jaffe
Amanda Jaffe is a writer and former attorney with a deep interest in organizations and mechanisms that address food insecurity. You can find more of her writing on her Substack publication, Age of Enlightenment (https://amandajaffewrites.substack.com/), and at www.amandajaffewrites.com.
PHOTO, TOP: Kristina Wong performing her #FoodBankInfluencer show on stage. Photo credit to Portland Center Stage.
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