‘We are what we eat,’ says artist

ISTANBUL

BLOK art space Istanbul will present an exhibition by Italian artist Marco Di Giovanni that provides food for thought on nutrition and eating.

“The Edible Infinite” is a conceptual approach on the matter of food and ingestion, visualizing the infinite ritual of daily food consumption in an intimate yet universal approach. The exhibition will be one of three concurrently held exhibitions in two countries, making the project an internationally intertwining work. 

Two other exhibitions of the artist’s work are running simultaneously in Italy at Museo San Domenico and BeCube in Imola and Il Chiostro Arte Contemporanea in Saronno.

From May 18, 2014, the artist’s birthday, Di Giovanni began to draw everything that he ingested and is set to continue until May 18 of this year. The result of this performance expanded over time to include a large quantity of ink drawings on yellow food paper (mainly trattoria placemats).

A video will show in a long series all the designs the artists realized during the year-long performance, while an audio installation, made in collaboration with Gianluca Favaron – a “digital sound craftsman” – will play back sounds obtained by recording the chewing, swallowing and digestion of the artist.

Modern fatigue is hence summed up in this necessary nourishment of the body joined with the obsession generated by food itself: magazine publications on the topic, television programs in which the chef becomes the absolute leader and food bloggers on Instagram. With food becoming an obsession and ceasing to be mere nutrition for the body, Di Giovanni interrogates this new reality. 

Ultimately, “we are what we eat,” he said.

The exhibition, which will open on May 15, can be visited until June 16.