The labor that puts food on our tables
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snacks and brunch dates — our daily lives are structured around mealtimes and eating. But every bit of food that makes it onto the table and to the plate had to have been harvested, picked, packaged and transported by oftenoverlooked farmworkers.
In the latest entry in the San Jose Museum of Art’s “Beta Space” series, Bay Area artist Victor Cartagena asks viewers to consider the laborers who make the daily act of eating possible.
Cartagena’s show, on view through Sept. 4, explores the economics and politics of California’s agriculture industry. For this mixedmedia exhibition, Cartagena drew inspiration from his own experiences as an immigrant from El Salvador, the contentious political conversations surrounding immigration in the United States, and the difficult working conditions of the Bay Area’s migrant farmworkers.
“Victor and I were interested in the labor that goes into the food we eat every day and take for granted,” said Marja van der Loo, the museum’s assistant curator and coordinator of the exhibition. “We take for granted what’s in grocery stores and farmers’ markets. People focus on what they’re eating and not the labor behind it.”
Cartagena’s show is the fifth iteration of the museum’s “Beta Space” series, which is described as an “experimental laboratory” where artists can engage with the South Bay and create work that captures the diversity and innovation of Silicon Valley.
“In the context of the Bay Area, San Jose is very diverse, but often overlooked as an area that celebrates different cultures,” said van der Loo. “Victor was a great fit for this because he’s interested in looking at the way society affects people and the different choices we all make that then influence how people live here.”
Cartagena and van der Loo coordinated with the United Farm Workers Foundation branch in Salinas in making this exhibition.
“During long conversations with the United Farm Workers Foundation and their families, they would tell me of their histories, of pain and sorrows and adventures,” said Cartagena. “They work under the sun for uncountable hours so that we have our food on our tables.”
Cartagena’s time with the foundation led him to Salinas’ sugar beet harvests. He met with 101-year-old Maurilio Maravilla, a former sugar beet harvester, who recalled stories of tough working conditions in the fields.
One that particularly resonated with Cartagena was how farmworkers would resort to sucking on the sugar beets themselves to keep up their energy and productivity. This led to “Sugar Face,” a series of 12 face masks modeled after Maravilla and made entirely out of sugar. Hanging under the bright lights of the galleries, the masks will warp and melt during their six months on display.
The history of farm labor is inherently tied to the history of immigration, which serves as another source of inspiration for Cartagena. One large, striking piece on display is “Burrocracia,” a collection of life-size forms of figures mid-transformation between donkey and human that critiques the chaotic, corrupt and inefficient bureaucracies that inhibit people like farmworkers from getting a safe immigration process and a fair paycheck.
Another installation, “Labor Tea,” is made up of stacked, empty tea bags hanging from the ceiling. In lieu of tea leaves, known for being especially difficult to pick and package, each bag contains anonymous images from Cartagena’s collection of abandoned passport photos from 1980s El Salvador, remnants of a national violent civil war that lasted more than a decade. The same faces are printed onto the china plates in “La Santa Cena,” a long table installed in the middle of the gallery, with empty seats representing invisible immigrant labor.
“The message is simple,” said Cartagena. “We (immigrants) struggle, but we are also the ones who work and build, especially in work that many people cannot or do not want to do. This is the inspiration for this project.”
Cartagena and van der Loo hope this exhibition raises awareness of an issue that has pervaded San Jose since its agricultural boom in the early 20th century, long before Silicon Valley brought technology to the forefront of the Bay Area’s economy.
“Agriculture built this area … then tech pushed out this agriculture we still depend so much on,” said van der Loo. “This is all still happening in our backyard.”
Cartagena added, “I would like to see young people in my community realize that they are reflected and seen in these difficult times.”