You Are What You Eat, 2001, 48x90 aprox. Digital C-Print mounted on Plexi
Click on the image to see a detail.

ABOUT RONI MOCAN'S WORK

            According to the Brazilian thinker Osvald de Andrade, who bet towards the concept of intellectual anthropophagy, implying the ability to devour alien thoughts to make them our own, the panorama of what’s left to digest is simply frightening. To daily devour aspects of human knowledge and to have a notion of what’s left to learn places the common individual facing the infinite. However to imagine oneself as an infinitesimal fragment of the relation is no insignificant matter. It is to consider a space made of tensions that places us on an indispensable part of a whole. That’s the reason why the project You Are What You Eat by Roni Mocán unites in one single plane –or plate– more than 2000 images that represent the different eating times that the artist consumed a whole year. Obviously this monosectorial decision and systematic register implies an appreciation of the daily act of eating. However, seen as a process about knowledge, the metabolism –in its primary physical functions such as the choice of food types, the identification with these, the swallowing and digestion of them– transforms itself into an analogy of the form in which we consume information. In this sense, it turns indispensable to consider which foods and drinks of any corner of the Earth are cultural products that contain the ingredients that satisfy the body at the same time that they inform us. Flavors, consistency, ingredients or condiments replicate the details of particular situations, precise contexts and alien cultures to make them our own.

            On this work, Roni Mocán brings us to a menu –his menu– that shows the way in which the individual distributes a basic necessity at the same time that it shows the distribution of his interest in acquiring the knowledge of others. Also, digesting a chicken sandwich brought from Guatemala to New York, Chinatown fortune cookies, fast food or menus with determined spices is a symptom of how knowledge flows in actuality and how these processes are slowly transforming in a planetary digestion.

– Rosina Casali
la curandería
Independent Curator

Text in Spanish

ARTIST STATEMENT

You are what you eat
              – Brillat-Severin

            Just like the quote by Brillat-Severin that gives the name to this work, this is who I was during the year 2001. This project is a composite image of more than 2000 digital pictures taken from January 1 to December 31, 2001. These are not necessarily well composed or meticulously lit images; these are visual snapshots in chronological order that as a whole present a kind of self-portrait of this period.

            Apart from the basic act of documenting everything I ate and drank (except glasses of water), I’m particularly interested in how these food images interact with the viewer, how the viewer experiences the artwork creating a dialog and raising fundamental questions about how food and its related issues define many aspects of our lives.

– Roni Mocán

 

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