The National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC) is a project that uses bitter melon (goya) as a symbolic medium to explore bitter emotions and taste, under the motto "Better Living Through Bitter Melon." Operating as a fictional council persona, the project has proposed alternative approaches to various social systems including CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), homeopathy, community gardens, and guerrilla gardening.

The project began in 2006 at a community garden in Boston's South End, a neighborhood grappling with gentrification. In the 1970s, when urban redevelopment plans were halted, immigrants occupied vacant lots and transformed them into gardens growing produce that reminded them of home. Noticing the high production rate of bitter melon—a clue to understanding the area's Asian immigrant population—I conceived a project that layered residents' "bitter feelings" about the past and present with an exploration of the essence of bitterness itself.

Practical initiatives have included product and recipe development, "Bitter Market Research" collecting people's bitter experiences, and behavioral observation of the bitter melon mascot (incorporating perspectives on race and gender)—all undertaken with a sense of humor. The 2008 art book "Manual," documenting NBMC's activities and principles, inspired programming that toured five U.S. museums from 2012 to 2015. For Rirkrit Tiravanija's exhibition on food circulation and anthropology, I collaborated with nutritionists and homeopaths to create preserved foods (tsukemono) based on recipes derived from participants' bitter memories (2015). In "Promiscuous Production: Breeding is Bittersweet," working with an architecture team, local residents, and students, we created a community garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, cross-breeding goya (bitter) with melon (sweet) to cultivate a new "bittersweet melon," also producing limited-edition packaged artworks from the harvest.