The Use of Food as A Medium in Art - the Literal and Metaphorical Consumption of Art

Subashri Sankarasubramanian

Food is a significant element of communal experience and acts as a medium of communication between the past and the present through rituals, habits and shared making practices. Food as a medium in contemporary art explores the binaries of consumption and questions the inherent binaries present in the perception and consumption of food. The idea of art consumption, both metaphorical and literal, play a vital role in the experience of food-based art.

This element of consumption is also the thin divide that separates food as food and food as a material medium. The work delves into the concept of the culinary triangle proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss in his book, "The Raw and The Cooked", and its possible uses in contemporary art-making practices. The culinary triangle puts forth the idea of three distinct components of food - the edible, the inedible and one that is neither this nor that. It is in this space of limbo that art-making can be explored further. It brings with it an element of life, where the audience gets to experience "this and that" and that allows them to communicate with the work in their way. In this session, Subashri discusses how her works fall under this strange and artistically underexplored category of food consumption.

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