Food Grade - Sausage, 2016
Silicon, sodium benzoate, acid coloring, ethyl maltol, rope.
Necklace
Various dimensions
The work draws upon the social issues in China nowadays and things I experience after I came back from the United States. One of the noticeable issues is food safety. The abuse of food additives and industrial materials, which is illegal, is the main factor of making people sick, even die here. When we eat processed foods, we also eat a bunch of food additives. I doubt that if there is real meat in a sausage, or it is all additives.
Thus, the materials I use include sodium benzoate and artificial coloring. The former is a common preservative, which is carcinogenic in excessive use; and the latter is acid-dye for textiles, but it is also used in some meat-packing plants to make foods look fresh.
In this series of works, I play with sausage which is made out of silicone with realistic elasticity, and I make the connection between sausage and intestines through the similar shapes, colors and textures. The process of how the food we eat becomes part of our body is presented. The boundary between nature and artificial is blended, and the body is changed by these industrial materials from inside to outside.
Therefore, in terms of jewelry, are the foods we eat jewelry? Are we wearing our foods? As the saying goes, ‘You are what you eat.’ The body is constructed and changed by the foods we eat, which is similar with the fact of wearing jewelry. Besides, the body is an integral part of nature. It will become other materials in other forms nourishing other species, so necklace, which is in looping form, presents this cycle.