Nowadays, perhaps more than ever, our relation to what we produce, eat, and ingest has become increasingly politicised. Food recipes and diet trends have turned into moral status claims, badges of political affiliation, even hopes for redemption. From advertising billboards, cooking blogs, and mouth-watering Instagram pics of elaborately designed dishes, terms such as ‘gluten-free’, ‘lactose intolerant’, ‘vegetarian’, and ‘vegan’ have entered our daily vocabulary. We symbolically savour and allow to ferment identity, language, and ideology through what we eat—or, in many cases, through what we abstain from eating or drinking. And yet, when sitting at the table, we rarely bind our food preferences to global malnutrition, the sins of industrial production, the ongoing controversies over genetic modifications, or the inhumane treatment of animals.
‘You are what you eat’, an aphorism that conceals more than it initially insinuates, lends its name to this group exhibition, which approaches the vast subject of food through the angle of identity politics and ideology.
Artists: Simon Brugner, Sinem Dişli, Klaus Pichler, Andy Sewell, Henk Wildschut, Ksenia Yurkova
