Food: Bigger Than Whose Plate?
Provocative and experimental, the exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum hit but also missed many marks.
Food is what sustains us and keeps us going. The experience of eating makes us happy, sad, disgusted, nostalgic and so on; ultimately, food brings people together and nurtures communities and relationships. Being such a massive yet close topic to us all, the Food: Bigger than the Plate exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum might have bitten off more than they could chew.
The exhibition follows the food cycle, showcasing challenging concepts through a mix of practical projects and storytelling. It is divided into four different sections: composting, farming, trading and eating and the themes are didactically marked with a chart placed at the entrance of every new room. The curatorial team set an innovative and playful tone, changing the usual cycle associated with food and reversing this by focusing on the end stage in a food cycle — waste and the human relation to this. Each section has quite distinct aesthetics and intentions, hoping to convey a multisensory experience and emotional change on audiences.
At the beginning of the exhibition, visitors are welcomed to the gallery space with digestive and eating sounds, the flesh colours and textures on the walls resembling intestines. The loops presented in the exhibition path, representing the digestive system add to the purpose of shocking audiences, but also distances the visitor from the enjoyment of food itself and as something that represents communities and gathering. The initial exhibition section ‘Composting’ considers many projects dealing with creative ways to utilise waste, one of the first projects being Loowatt’s waterless flush toilet, which is not something you would expect to be displayed when seeing an exhibition exploring the topic of food. It is definitely a surprising section with every intent to shock visitors whilst sometimes touching on pressing issues such as sustainability. However, I dare say the beginning of the exhibition is the most confusing of all the sections this is due to the unexpected nature and amplitude of the projects selected, these projects range from the speculative to the solution-driven.
The exhibition’s provocative approach continues on the ‘Farming’ section, which showcases projects challenging our eating habits, especially towards meat consumption and the butchering of animals. You can’t help but feel a little bit guilty and anxious of personal eating habits, especially at the juxtaposition of the beautiful and bucolic wallpaper Fruits from the Garden and the Field by Fallen Fruit, placed right next to the very graphic film (Our Daily Bread by Nikolaus Geyrhalter and Wolfgang Widerhofer) which documents the raw reality of mass meat production. By the time I arrived at the exhibition sections ‘Trading’ and ‘Eating’, which both have food tastings, I was feeling so overwhelmed and disgusted with our food system that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to try the food.
After visiting the exhibition, the general feeling I had was: it covered too much and from too many different angles, ranging from speculative projects on a restaurant with humans as a food source to microorganisms (To Flavour Our Tears by The Center for Genomic Gastronomy) to body positivity being celebrated by pictures of women eating whatever they want (Food Rules by Sana Badri). So many of the projects touched on different food-related aspects, that the actual main message of the exhibition was lost in the reflection on the grandeur of the topic itself. The lack of coherence between some projects made me wonder what was the overall message. Was it to declare that we need to be more aware of what we eat and how is it produced? Was it to talk about sustainability? Was it to just say the food is a broader topic than you think? Was it to showcase contemporary provocative and critical projects? To criticise meat consumption? To advocate for veganism? To talk about body positivity? These were all grounds covered in the four sections of the exhibition, and by the end, I had too much on my mind, feeling slightly guilty of my eating habits and trying to understand what was the main goal of what I had just seen.
Another important point to make is that food is a real issue, with actual consequences to the environment, and starvation is still a reality in many parts of the world. At times, it did feel problematic that projects or even the curatorial approach didn’t address this more directly. So it did make me wonder: why am I seeing cheese made out of celebrities’ pubic hair or videos of people using their bodies as plates when I could be seeing projects touching on pressing issues such as the fact that many people still have no food on their plates? Food: Bigger than the Plate did intend to be conceptual and bold, but this discussion mostly focused on people who don’t struggle to have access to clean and healthy food. On such a global and pressing topic such as food nutrition, I would expect more relevant solutions. Maybe the exhibition could benefit from a more decolonised conversation, understanding food in a broader and non-eurocentric way through actions such as placing more interactive tools for audiences to engage with understanding and improving their eating habits, narrowing down the scope of conceptual and speculative projects and actually showcasing projects tackling on more pressing real issues such as sustainable harvesting, feeding growing populations, starvation and so on. By displaying more projects that focused on society reviewing and acting upon the future of food, instead of just speculating on abstract projects and notions about food, audiences could get a better understanding on how little we know about our food system and how much needs to change.
On a lighter note, Food: Bigger than the Plate did have strong elements and some very interesting projects displayed. The multi-sensory experiences were very innovative, especially the food tasting. The positioning of the LOCI Food Lab at the end of the exhibition path had a palatable way (pun intended) of making visitors reflect on their beliefs on how the food system should be and then literally try their food creations out. Alongside their food creation, visitors were given a receipt which contained live data on the percentage of visitors which shared the same beliefs on the food system. It was a dynamic interpretative tool which I have never seen in an exhibition before. In addition to that, it was a practical way of engaging with personal priorities when it comes to food.
In conclusion, the exhibition was successful in the balance of provocative and playful displays and used conceptual and experimental forms of delivery. It did have really interesting moments that generated reflection on how broad the topic of food can be, but also felt like the provocative nature of the exhibition was just for the sake of it at times. Upon reaching the end of the exhibition, I started to reconsider all of my eating habits, but I wasn’t given suggestions or ways on how to act upon this. Perhaps the curatorial approach and realisation of the exhibition would benefit from a deeper decolonised level of research, placing the exhibition and its focus in a more progressive and real-world, envisioning tangible futures on such an urgent and present topic. Food: Bigger than the Plate does a good job on showcasing creative contemporary approaches to food in every stage of its cycle, but precisely due to deciding to showcase so much, its actual main message was lost at times. Presenting a playful and energising take on the future possibilities of food is entirely valid, but it is also essential to talk about it as a global issue, especially when many parts of the world still can’t afford to be conceptual about such a fragile and integral necessity.
All images courtesy of Lara Machado, Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre and Misato Ehara.
▄ Lara Machado
Lara Machado is a Brazilian designer studying at the MA Curating Contemporary Design at Kingston University funded with a Chevening Scholarship, the UK government’s international awards programme aimed at developing global leaders. She was previously awarded a study abroad scholarship for the BA Design at Goldsmiths — University of London. She believes in design as a critical and multidisciplinary subject and a tool for reflection and change. Besides having worked with design in various contexts and as an Art Director in an advertising agency, she is also very passionate performance, and musical theatre.Peer Reviewed by: Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre / Editor: Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre
