The Fortune Cookie Project is a participatory artwork by Christopher Reynolds that explores authorship, community, and the transmission of meaning through everyday rituals. Drawing on the role of the fortune cookie writer—a figure who anonymously offers thoughts, challenges, humor, and inspiration—Reynolds parallels this position with that of the artist, who similarly acts as a provider of reflection and provocation for audiences.
To develop the project, Reynolds posted an open advertisement on Craigslist, inviting individuals to share personal stories about the impact fortune cookies have had in their lives. From the respondents, he assembled a diverse community that included couples, children, business owners, and fellow artists. Through these conversations, Reynolds not only captured portraits of his participants but also assumed the role of fortune writer, crafting a personalized fortune for each subject based on their shared experiences and histories.
Each fortune, while deeply specific to the individual, maintains the universal and enigmatic tone characteristic of traditional fortune cookies—blurring the line between personal narrative and collective myth. Once written, these nine fortunes were mass-produced inside real fortune cookies and distributed freely to the public, expanding the project's reach beyond the initial group of participants. In doing so, Reynolds transforms what began as intimate storytelling into a public exchange, creating an extended community where subjects, viewers, and fortune cookie recipients all become active participants in the unfolding network of meaning.
The final installation of The Fortune Cookie Project consists of nine large-format photographic portraits, each accompanied by the fortune written for the subject displayed below their image. In front of the photographs sits a large bowl filled with the artist-created fortune cookies, freely available for visitors to take. This gesture of distribution reinforces the project's central themes of generosity, chance, and the unpredictable ways meaning circulates through both personal and public spheres.
By merging portraiture, performance, and mass production, Reynolds interrogates how personal histories can be abstracted into universally resonant messages—and how seemingly minor rituals, like opening a fortune cookie, participate in larger systems of connection, memory, and interpretation.