Food (R)evolution photo exhibition sparks pop-up conversations on the Rooiplein and in Stellenbosch University Art Museum
The Food (R)evolution Exhibition has developed as an innovative research tool, an experiment in how a photo exhibition staged in different public spaces can open up important conversations about the complexities of a rapidly evolving African and global food system.
Following on a successful activation of the exhibition that took place in the Company’s Gardens in Cape Town in April, the collection of 29 photos, showing a diversity of diets around the world, and linking to global issues of agricultural production and climate change, corporate power, urbanisation, seed systems, nutrition security and conflict, were installed on the Rooiplein on Stellenbosch University campus from 4 to 25 May, 2016.
In a public workshop held on 12 May, a diverse group of participants including students, food activists, academics and farmers came together to engage in deep yet playful conversations about the photographs and their rich, multilayered and inevitably personal and subjective meanings.
The event kicked off with a walk-through of the exhibition on the Rooiplein, with small group discussions facilitated by Southern African Food Lab Director Dr. Scott Drimie, Food (R)ev Exhibition Curator Gwendolyn Meyer, CST Senior Researcher Dr. Scott Drimie and CST Researcher Dr. Laura Perreira.
Moving on to the Stellenbosch University Art Museum, the group convened around the iMadiba Project, a concrete replica of Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island, conceptualised by local artist Erhardt Thiel as a space for ‘brutal honest dialogues’.
Participants then broke off into small groups to explore the museum’s exhibition spaces, where the museum’s curator Ullrich Wolff had skillfully placed eight additional framed images in different locations around the museum, creating a ‘pop-up treasure hunt’ in the museum, and adding a new dimension of dialogue between the photographs and the pre-existing art exhibitions, which included works by South African female artists Mary Sibande, Maggie Laubser, and Nomusa Makhubu.
The workshop format enabled participants to engage deeply with the photographs, asking provocative questions and challenging each others’ views of industrial versus organic farming, seed sovereignty, and the concentration of power and dependence on cheap food in the global food system.
For more information, please visit www.foodrev.net