Gn Rae-Ann

The use of Food in Contemporary and Participatory Art


Food has often been at the centre of art for centuries—still life paintings depicting subject matter like floral arrangements and food items can go as far back as the 15th century. However, the use of food within contemporary art has changed drastically, with artists incorporating edible food into their sculptures, performances, and such. Artists have been making use of food, its preparation, the act of eating food to form the ground for political discussions, to break down the barrier between themselves and their audience, create engaging art, and more.

The use of food in has been a common medium used in participatory art, breaking down barriers between the artist and their viewers. While art was and still is commonly seen as the creation of an object like a painting or sculpture, contemporary/conceptual artists believe that a piece of art need not be an object that has been built (as stated in artist Lawrence Weiner’s Declaration of Intent (1968)), instead choosing to focus more on the process of art-making and their audience instead. By removing the “object” that the artist has created, they therefore remove the object that was separating them from their viewers. A lot of such artists also work with relational aesthetics, in which social interactions are presented as the catalyst or the main medium of the artwork. Artists that do this include Rirkrit Tiravanija in works such as untitled 1990 (pad thai) (1990) in which the artist cooked and shared a pad thai meal with visitors in the gallery, connecting participants to his food and culture. In Amanda Heng’s Let’s chat (1996-current), the artist invites viewers within the space to join her in preparing beansprouts, drink Chinese tea and engaging in conversation—reminiscent of the older village days with a tight community who would bond with each other over the preparation of food like what Heng has done. These are both examples in which the artists are able to directly connect and create art with their viewers instead of holding them at a distance, as well as creating a sense of community among these viewers that were there during the duration of the works. The artist group Oda Projesi described their practice as “using art as a means for creating and recreating new relations between people”, which I feel could be applied to these artists who work with relational aesthetics and social sculpture. They have very cleverly and effectively made use of food – be it the preparation or the consumption of— as a springboard for these works to happen. The universal nature of food, meal and conversation is possibly what allows for audiences of all backgrounds to contribute to the successful execution of these works and join in these very specific, fabricated communities that are created within the spaces these participatory works are carried out in.

(Let’s Chat by Amanda Heng)

Ironically, while most artists working with such a nature of participatory art do have these ideas of breaking down barriers and forming a community within their performance space, there is the issue of the lack of inclusivity of the general public. Viewers of participatory projects can be separated into three groups—the primary audience being those who physically participate in the work, the secondary audience being those who watch the project unfold before them, and outsiders who were unable to view or experience the work. Unlike other mediums which allow for works to be displayed in a gallery for longer periods of time, participatory projects often span only over a few hours of a particular day, and is rarely re-staged. This results in only a few people being able to participate in the work, and therefore only these few (the “primary” audience) are able to fully enjoy and engage with the work and be a part of the “community” that the artist tries to establish, and “outsiders” have an extremely slim chance of experiencing the work ever. Referring to Tiravanija’s works, Claire Bishop states that “in intensifying convivial relations for a small group of people… …it produces greater exclusivity vis-à-vis the general public” (2012). On top of that, not everyone present at the time the work was taking place would be willing to participate in the work, which creates a divide between first-hand participants and the secondary audience (Bishop, 2012). Due to the nature of such works, there is the possibility that the general public (those who were not able to physically witness or take part in the work) might feel that these works exclude a larger community because of how inaccessible it might be to them.

The use of food also often invites the idea of the dynamics of a shared meal as well as plays around with the power of hosting. A few of the works mentioned above involve the artist in the centre of the work, often beginning and facilitating conversations that happen during the process, and thus hold a certain level of authority among their audience throughout the work. This authority has the power to shift the conversation and can ultimately dictate who gets to engage in the conversation the most, as well as possibly shut off viewers from the said conversation, which once again links back to the idea of how accessible the work should be to the primary and secondary audiences. The audience also realise the artist’s position as the host within the work—especially in a gallery context—and this could affect the way they contribute to the ongoing dialogue or the way that they act within the meal space. The work could therefore become difficult to navigate as the artist tries to find a way to facilitate an open discussion and carefully go about the dynamics of hosting if they want to create a sense of intimacy and community for a larger group of people, rather than allowing such dynamics to further separate their audiences.

Artists have also been using food and food art to discuss culture and politics in their body of work. Food’s universal nature also allows for cultural differences in others’ culinary traditions, from the kinds of food that is eaten to how it is prepared to how it is presented. Artist Jasleen Kaur’s publication Be Like Teflon (2019) contains traditional South Asian recipes in between transcripts of conversations had by the artist and her family and friends, discussing topics such as community, South Asian feminism, and diaspora and discrimination faced by the South Asian community within the United Kingdom. Like the other artists previously mentioned, Kaur uses culturally rooted food and recipes as a springboard for conversation about identity politics and troubles faced by South Asian communities and families in a very Caucasian country. In between chapters of the publication, Kaur also uses the format of a recipe to provide statistics about hardships faced by South Asian women, such as arranged marriage, rape, and domestic abuse. Food is seen as an important marker of one’s cultural identity, and artists have recognised that food is a very accessible tool for people to experience others’ cultures and traditions (Schmitt, 2012), and therefore use food to spark conversations about cultural and political issues. In artist Jimmy Ong’s Open Love Letters (2018), the artist casts a steel sculpture of a Singaporean founding father and coloniser, before splitting the statue in half and using it as a grill to make a traditional wafer known as kueh kapit or ‘love letters’, serving it to viewers, contrasting a traditional Southeast Asian snack against a white coloniser. Ong uses this to both clearly criticise the glorification of European colonisers, as well as create an environment where viewers are able to discuss and reflect on their own views about the country’s colonial history, and where their cultural narrative might comfortably fit into that.


(Conflict Kitchen (Iran Menu) by Jon Rubin & Dawn Weleski)

While I have mentioned that food is universal, does that necessarily mean that the use of food in participatory projects is able to create universal audiences? Food may be universal, however, there is the possibility that the use of specific cuisines might possibly limit the type of audiences that are able to fully engage with the work, especially works which seem to rely on the cultural importance of food. Unfamiliar foods may be scary or intriguing to certain audiences, but such political works use these foods to tap into a deeper historical significance and tradition containing a certain culture’s own political tensions, and without that historical understanding of something as simple as food, the audience of the work might become extremely limited. However, some artists may use these differences to their advantage. Artists Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski launched the participatory project Conflict Kitchen (2010) which takes the form of a pop-up restaurant based in the United States—serving cuisines from countries that were/are currently in conflict with the United States such as Iran, Cuba, Afghanistan and North Korea. In some instances, interviews the artists had with refugees and defectors were printed on the food wrappers. Rubin and Weleski make use of the act of serving food from these countries unfamiliar to their American audience as a platform for discussion and debate about the expanding cultures and political narratives of countries that participants might not know about outside of the narrative presented to them by local and government news, which may often cast these countries in an antagonistic light. Artists have used food in its many forms as a point for critical discussion, and although the cuisines used may not be universal, and the viewers and participants might not be familiar with it, it still allows for another debate of the effects of globalisation on food and culture on an international level (Schmitt, 2012), and a wider discussion about the commodity of such foods. In a way, food and recipes become a very easy platform for artists to engage with their viewers on culture and geopolitics. The serving of food and having of meals in both public and private spaces creates a very intimate environment for both the artist and their participants, building a sense of trust and establishing a level of safety where such topics can be talked about and facilitated with less tension.