Food as a Metaphor….

We’ve all heard the phrase, ‘you are what you eat’, but there’s a lot more to consider than that.   For example: how we eat, why we eat, where we eat.  All these choices – being reflections of our cultural identity – speak with volume about who we are as both individuals and a community.   That’s a lot of food for thought, no?  Well, these are exactly the kind of topics we’ve been thinking about after recently attending an exhibit at The School of Visual Art’s Gramercy Gallery.

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Entitled ‘Putting It All on the Table’, this group show featured works by selected students in the MFA Design for Social Innovation Department.  Each artist was given a plain wooden table to then use a blank canvas in creating statements about personal and global aspects regarding food and its production, distribution, and consumption.  Here’s a glimpse at two of our favorite pieces.  The first, entitled ‘The Last Meals’, examines food requests made by death row inmates.  The second piece, ‘Food Shrine!’, considers the burgeoning foodie culture and its ability to overshare every experience via social media.

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This, by no means, was what you’d think of as being a student show.  We left the exhibit feeling like we had just walked out of one of the major Chelsea Galleries.  The level of artistic execution was that undeniable and unforgettable.  Our impressions from the themes at hand still linger, making us look beyond each daily meal and consider how food is truly a metaphor of our intricate lives.  Here’s a helpful link with a more detailed look at the exhibit:  Putting It All on the Table.

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