Balance-Unbalance 2017: A Sense of Place / COMESTIBLE: Seven-Day Meal Plan

Category

Exhibition

Year

2017

Institution

Plymouth University, i-DAT, plymouth

Comment

The daily meal is a powerful human institution and the family dinner table a site where food and home meld into an ‘intimate place’ of nurture. But, in times when climate change jeopardizes food security the question of ‘what will we eat in the future?’ has become worrisome. With this concern in mind, Comestible: Seven-Day Meal Plan is a cookbook about food and sustainability that the visitor interacts with by turning the pages of a virtual flipbook on a touch-sensitive screen. The seven meals with photos and corresponding recipes (created by the artist with sustainable ingredients) meld together poetic narratives, notations, instructions, and warnings that sum up the entanglements on the role of food in present and future balance. As if at the edge of language, these recipes are ironic propositions departing from culinary directives. Instead, they explore current societal trends over “what we eat”, depicted in recipes appropriately titled “Changing Climate and Your Greens”, “Water Stress”, “Liberalized Trade”, and so forth. Organized with headings habitually found in pharmaceutical products, the recipes are sorted by “Ingredients”, “Directions”, “Uses”, and “Warnings”, implying that food is seen as a “prescription” for health. Concerned with food-insecure homes, ecological health, and concepts of sustenance, consumption, and nutrition, the artist’s food preparation becomes activism and her recipe writing a critical agent. In the spirit that guided the evolution of these recipes, the book invites the reader to travel with the author to new insights, transformations, and actions.

• Pat Badani
  Participating Artist