My degree project has been developed through research on the topics of originality, consumption, “vanitas” and consumer culture. It references the politics of consumption, desire, pollution, waste, the passing of time, the effect of decay, and death.
It consists of a glass-casted modern cornucopia. The glass captures decomposing traces and makes them solid and everlasting. Even with something so fragile and temporary as life, the material can freeze it in time. The glass captures life.
The scene is a reconstruction of a “still life” scene, a reference to Baroque painting. The installation comprises a light box, table design, shapes, material and coloured sculptures which are emblems of consumerism. The handmade and the organic are joined in composition, as if united in ruin and decay. The sculptures resemble the still life genre and allude to memento-mori.
This degree project also addresses the industrial food system. It emphasises efficiency, profit and power in ways that are narrowly construed, sometimes at the expense of other environmental and social values.
