As my final semester, I am taking an Anthropology Fieldwork Lab on food waste on campus. This class has encouraged me to critically examine the root causes of food waste. Our reflective assignment could be anything from an essay to a piece of art. Here is my work!
As the title of my piece of art suggests, there was a lot to digest about this course. It all starts with entering the field at the top of the small intestine, where I had to contemplate reflexivity and as Anthropologist Ashanté Reese spoke to, what “elsewheres” I brought with me; which included growing up in an Italian household and science background.
My childhood is interwoven in my art, with my mom’s symbol being a scioatello (squirrel), since she maintains an abundance of food, and my dad’s being an avvoltoio (vulture), since he eats our leftovers; this is meant to represent the influence of how we grow up on our relationship with food. I had a couple heartbreaks during this process, including my failed relationship with an eggplant-gone-bad, which I am still not over. A lot of my process in this course was debunking myths, one of the most shocking being that Misfits is part of the problem (featured at the top of the colon); essentially, the Misfits model is based on overproduction and subsequent food “waste”. Sometimes I felt tangled in the complexity and absurdity of food waste, and I hope that comes through in each nook and cranny of my digestive system.
In terms of stylistic decisions, I decided to border my thoughts on where our digestive system is mainly located: our gut. When I think about this, it makes a lot of sense. So many of us and our interviewees had a “gut” feeling or thought that something is inherently wrong with food waste and particularly the paradox of having surplus food, but hungry people. Furthermore, I kept this drawing in black and white as an ironic statement – food will never be a black and white topic. I tried to balance the gravity of food waste with playfulness (such as “Are you kidding me” along with silly questions like “Do spices expire?”). At the end of the day, we need a little lightness to move forward. I’ve left this course with an arsenal of information and clarity on what matters: individual change and adaptations are important, as is activism to push companies to make change. Food is being wasted before consumers even see it.
I hope you enjoy traveling through the churning of my raw thoughts, challenges, and insights.
Other musing from this class: