“FOOD GARDEN”
The interior portrait project was a peer-to-peer project in which Sanjana Ghosh and I had to portrait each others without visual references to our physical appearance.
By investigating her relationship to her personal objects within her space, I was inspired to use food as the medium of this project. It is by interviewing her and examining her personal space that I was able to discover that she is food lover and that she stores a lot of it under her bed. That is why I was struck by the idea of creating a garden using food.
- Why is it a garden?
A garden is a planned and organized space that also gives a nuance of privacy. I decided to design this particular private space in a very unlike but illustrative way to represent Sanjana. The intimacy of a garden also reminded me of the hidden box in which she stores her food under her bed.
– References and Research
– Jennifer Rubell is an American conceptual artist who is known for her food performances. I was personally inspired by her interactive food installations (banana pile, old fashioned…). The simplicity of her work elucidated me to work with only few constituents, and it then allowed to take full advantage of their characteristics (smell, texture, disposal…).
– Michel Blazy is a French painter and he is also known for his evolving, ephemeral and observational works. His orange sculpture artwork was very inspiring because it reminded me of how aesthetic simplicity can be. His works are always related to nature so that also initiated the idea of a garden.
– Explanation of how the work relates to the class project (or to your ongoing personal project)
“You are what you eat.”
The utilization of food as a medium for this project is advantaging since our nutrition and our food preferences are revealing or are at least a part of our personality. During my investigation in Sanjana’s domestic place, I was surprised to find out that she stored cup noodles in a big box under her bed. The texture characteristics of cooked noodles inspired me to actually work with food to design this garden. The smoothness, elasticity and stickiness of the noodles allowed me to explicitly display the “germination” of this garden, that’s why you can see a blossoming plant on top. It portrays Sanjana’s personality by illustrating how being the smooth, flexible and hardworking person that she is allows her to grow exquisitely. Sanjana is a coffee addict so I decided to use coffee beans as the soil of this garden, representing the fact that it is her daily nourishment. I purposely got dark roasted coffee because of its strong aroma. The smell of coffee is sharp and triggers the feeling of wakefulness, which is pretty much captivating. The tarragon dried leaves were added in order to balance the strong aroma of the coffee by releasing its exotic and sweet scent. It also adds more greenery to the garden. The whole motive of regulating the fragrance of the food garden was to create this pleasant bohemian harmony that combines both sharp and tropical odors. The garden is also well ordered and very neat because it renders to Sanjana’s obsessive cleaning disorder.
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More about this project:
- Two of my documentations of Sanjana’s place:
Photo of a “nature” corner in her room.
It inspired me to elaborate the idea of a garden.
Collage of her favorite food.
Based on the food that I found in the box under her bed.
- Art research book:
On the collaboration of Pablo Picasso and Gjon Mili:
This collaboration was really interesting because of its spontaneity. I was initially inspired by Picasso’s artwork ‘Drawing with Pure Light’ and created a layout that reflected his artwork in some way. The information researched was distributed through the pages, connecting each fact by the lines that somewhat produce a rhythm or flow, which is clearly conveyed in the artwork.