McDonald's, Valentine's Day, and the Fall of Man

In the last semester I have done a lot of art centered around food.  This is partly because I'm in a class called The Edible Aesthetic, but a lot of my photography this term has featured edibles as well.  Food is so accessible and inspiring.  Everyone knows what it's like to eat, to crave.

This was my piece in a show called "In Your Mouth." The sculpture is titled "For Shame."

Many luxury items like bananas and chocolate come from the Caribbean/Africa where countless workers labor for hours in dangerous conditions to provide them for us. Our treatment of animals and farmland is dismal, but even so we keep unwrapping those magical burgers. This piece invites viewers to examine our consumption habits while referencing the "first" shameful act- an act caused by eating! We have tried to cover our shame with many things, but often what we try to cover up shows on the surface.

 

Made with fake foliage sewn together. Would have loved to use real fig leaves, but finding a fig tree proved harder than I anticipated.

 

Garments made of feux fur and lined with McDonald's burger wrappers. The wrappers say, "Created Just for You." I thought that worked on a couple different levels.

Made with discarded Valentine candy wrappers like heart-shaped boxes of candy and sweetheart boxes cut up and woven together.
That was my final project last semester for Edible Aesthetic. It was a fantastic class.  I've learned so much. 

"For Shame" focuses on what our food says about us.  These photos focus on what our food says to us.

Sweethearts are gross.  They taste like Tums without the benefit of soothing your upset stomach.  Then of course they have barely legible messages stamped onto their tiny surfaces.  "Kiss Me" "Get Real" "Go Girl!" Sweethearts come off as an attempt to drum up enthusiasm for a pointless holiday and in the end, they just sound bossy.  So, NO. I am not going to "kiss you" or "get real" or "go" because a tiny heart-shaped piece of chalk has advised me to do so.


Millions of people eat McDonald's burgers every day.  I wonder how many out of those millions notice what is written on the wrappers before they rip the paper away and dig in.  I never had.  I asked a McDonald's manager if I could have 10 or 15 of them to do an art project.  When he brought them out all clean and unwrinkled, I almost didn't recognize them for what they were.  Their pristine condition allowed me to, for the first time, notice the message they carry. 

Pretty spooky, right?  Billions of these papers were stamped with this same message so that they could go around billions of burgers.  It's the most impersonal thing in the world.  Add to that the fact that no one even reads the packaging....what's the point?  But don't we all want to believe that this tiny squashed sandwich was, in fact, "created" (not simply "made" or "slapped together") just for us?  As we bite into these little gift-wrapped grease traps, we are buying into a lie without even really being aware of what that lie is.

That's a small piece of what I've been up to lately.  Hope it makes a little sense.