Arts Exhibitions can be an efficient tool to make people interact with Food, and see Food from a completely new angle, in a revolutionary context. Here are some of the exhibitions I helped conceptualize.
Il Cibo Uccide
Il Cibo Uccide (Eating kills) is an exhibition created in Bologna, Italy in 2016 by few students from the Master Storia e Culture dell’Alimentazione and in collaboration with C.A.C.C.A, that plays on Food Fears, using the design of a cigarette packaging. It invites people to think on the late Food Marketing Trends.
Would you take the risk to open the box advertising for a health risk, and eat what’s inside? Playing with the climate of fear created by marketing trends about gluten, lactose etc and putting them in perspective with other food fears from centuries ago (the evil color of Tomato risks to bring you straight to Hell), based on the work by Madeleine Ferrières, we created this exhibition for people to question their own belief and how they are brought to think about their food and ways of eating.
Le 7 Tavole
Le 7 Tavole (the 7 Tables) is an exhibition that took place in Spazio Battirame, Bologna, Italy in 2016. It was organized by the Master Storia e Culture dell’Alimentazione as well as the university scholar and Food Historian Massimo Montanari. Each table installation represents an aspect of how Eating is an eminently cultural process, from:
the Mother’s Milk and the choices of how to feed an infant
the process of Recognizing Nature and deciding what is Eatable, biologically and culturally
the Transformation of Landscapes via Agriculture
Going over the natural Limitations of Space (via markets and exchanges)…
and Time (via food preservation, canning, salting, fermentation)
The act of Cooking, through Fire and other culinary processes (Culinary Triangle, Lévi-Strauss)
The Table, as a place for sociability and social relations, aka the Commensability
