Consume-
Our Food Ahead. By: Miguel Hernández
Category: Installation • Technique: Silicon painted with oil in a pedestal • Format: 30"L x 30"W x 45"H • Year: 2009
As Americans, we produce a mere 1% of the food we consume. Despite our, not even our, but NATURE'S ability to grow more food, we choose instead to pay higher costs to produce lower quality food. GREAT! We're making our food 'green'. Green with sickness and disease. In this ART installation we see meat introduced in two forms: the organic, self-sustaining, environmentally intended pig, and the industrially produced, chemically ridden toxic swine. Both are found in our society, both available for purchase. What we see in the healthy pig is the animal in its natural state, existing without the injection of hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified food that was introduced to humanity only within the last century. The result is the animal as nature intended, as it existed in harmony for thousands of years, whole and complete and probiotic, or 'for life.' The other animal is green, but not green with environmental friendliness, green with pestilence.

In the well-respected author Michael Pollan's works, he suggests using sustainable agriculture to address some of these problems. Our sickness in this country can be dramatically decreased by taking care to honor nature. The further we stray from the natural course of life and death, and health and wellness, we will feel more detached from one another, losing the very filaments necessary for vitality. The steps needed to create and sustain awareness between people are born from our connection to the Earth. In order to recognize the interconnectedness of all living things, we must honor and respect both things in their natural state, as well as what we derive from technological means. The two work cooperatively! The important distinction to make is when and how to utilize the various weapons in our arsenal. We are feeding ourselves through feeding our livestock...so what are we feeding our livestock??

The fruit that grows on trees is exemplary of the cycle of life, and on a larger scale, the cycle of Earth. This natural sustainability involves the sun and the rain, without the need for human interference whatsoever. These resources are natural, God-given, and green, and not the green of sickness and disease. Feeding pigs the ground up remains of other pigs, as well as pumping them full of drugs, and/or feeding them grains modified through technological manipulation, as opposed to nature's perfect creation will certainly result in immeasurable destruction, disease, and death. Pigs fed to pigs eaten by humans...wouldn't the natural next step be humans eating humans?

Writing Credit: Kasey W Lockwood