Food as art with a hungry cause

A GROUP of fine art students have put together an unusual art exhibition exploring the history of food and the proceeds will help hungry students.

Square Meal started off as a creative research initiative conceived by historian and archivist Dr Amy Rommelspacher in 2022 and realised in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist and curator Dr Kathryn Smith and a group of her students in a teaching and learning context.

The 3rd-year Fine Art curriculum includes a studio practice intensive led by Smith, in which students are introduced to archives as inspiration and source material for the development of new art, exploring museological and curatorial modes of collection, interpretation, conservation and display.

Last year, students were introduced to archival material about food in Southern African history via the Dutch Reformed Church Archives.

“References to food in the archives remind us that everyone eats, and those who are now ‘buried in the archive’ once walked the earth. What these ‘others’ consumed and their beliefs about the world may now seem foreign or challenging to us, but just like them we get hungry, we eat, we live, and we try to find community.

“One individual, for instance, refers to having ‘a square meal of venison and sweet potatoes’ as he travelled through the southern parts of pre-colonial Zimbabwe (then Mashonaland) by ox wagon in the 1890s. This quote inspired the title of our collaborative project, and the sweet potato also features as a tool for artmaking in this exhibition. This plant, brought to Africa in the 1600s as a result of the Columbian exchange (the process named for Christopher Columbus, by which people, commodities and diseases crossed the Atlantic in both directions), embodies the complexity of food history,” the group said.

The artists said food history can provide insights into commodities, social and transport networks, environments, economies, rituals, and identity, but it’s a neglected field in Africa.

Artists participating in this exhibition are Hannah Davis, Seth Flaum, Roe Jones, Max Kuijers, Rebekah Pringle, Ekta Ramgobin, Kajal Ranchhod, Vikisha Ranchod, Ron Sauerman, Karinsa Schutte, Bianca Süssman and Eduard van Wyk.

Visitors are encouraged to bring a donation of a non-perishable food item, which will contribute to a social sculpture in the gallery, conceived by Kathryn Smith.

Donations will be placed in a demarcated area of one square metre and stacked as high as possible. At the conclusion of the exhibition, these items will be donated to the #Move4Food initiative.

Cash donations are welcome; please request a receipt.

EGGS by Max Kuijers (wood, acrylic, paints).