Is an installation consisting of already wasted carrots a complete waste?
On Tuesday the 29th September twenty-nine tonnes of carrots have been dumped from a truck onto Goldsmiths university campus as a part of an installation by Rafael Pérez Evans. Instantaneously, images and videos of the orange tide of carrots became viral. While sharing a picture of the street, the Times journalist George Greenwood tweeted “Does anyone know why a significant volume of carrots has just been dumped on Goldsmiths university campus?”. Thousands of tweets were made shortly after, with many trying to figure out the mystery behind the carrots. Since its installation, many students were seen climbing the pile of carrots to take photos and bring home carrots to eat themselves.
29 tonnes of carrots, truck, university glass building.
Courtesy of the artist.
The performance component of the site-specific intervention by the artist, titled Grounding (2020), was the truck dumping the mass of unwanted carrots into the courtyard next to the large Ben Pimlott glass building. According to Pérez Evans, he borrows the gesture of dumping from European farmers’ protests to transform it into a sculptural tool for grounding. The artist, who grew up in a family of farmers in Spain took inspiration by this form of protest, regularly used by European farmers that react against a central government which devalues their labour, agency and produce to points of ridiculousness. Staging Grounding in London in this context is apparently Pérez Evans’s way of reminding viewers of where their food comes from, and to consider the relationship our cities have with rural farmers.
29 tonnes of carrots, truck, university glass building.
Courtesy of the artist.
According to the artist’s website, the vegetables featured in the piece are “carrots that the food industry in the UK deems not worthy of shelves” and will be donated to farms to feed livestock, as originally intended. However, there were much confusion and debate at Goldsmiths and beyond on social media around the wasted carrots. Whilst many students and locals’ question whether this action is art, there are some students that point out that the piece failed to address the social problems that affect residents of their London borough. An Instagram account titled @GoldsmithCarrots has been created in protest of the artwork. “Every day I wake up and dump my silly little load of carrots on my silly little university” reads their account profile. A post by the account states “This account is run by 4 very angry Goldsmith art students!!! This one art student and their work is NOT representative of all goldsmith’s art students…Many art students at Goldsmiths don’t stand by this and it’s such a shame they are being pulled into this by being Goldsmiths art students.” The group which has been busy collecting, peeling, and grating the carrot pile to make vegan carrot cake and carrot soup is holding daily bake sales next to the artwork and donating the proceeds to local foodbanks. So far in the last five days, they successfully managed to raise more than £1,000.
As Pérez Evans’s installations are usually associated with questions around sculpture, rurality, the urban conditions, this site-specific intervention offers itself as a sculptural exercise in grounding where it occupies and challenges the opaque practices of the metropolis and the university industrial complex. The artist states that he actually wants Grounding, which is accompanied by a sign warning that the carrots are “not for human consumption,” to highlight the existing waste in food production systems.
How groundbreaking or ridiculous this installation might seem; it is not the first time artists have utilised heaps of food in their practice. Jennifer Rubell (b. 1970) is an American conceptual artist perhaps best known for her food performances. Growing up with art as a fact of life has given Rubell an innate understanding of the social interactions that happen with and around art. Her practice evolves around interaction and reaction — by using food as her primary medium, she invites the viewers to interact with unwittingly turned subjects. In 2012, the artist Markus Jeschaunig created an installation out of dry bread, metal, wood and concrete titled Arc de Triomphe. The work was realised in the context of Lendwirbel Festival 2012 in Graz (AT), accounts a global capitalist system that has passed the zenith of infinite growth. The aim of the installation was to enlighten a dark aspect of our behaviour around waste production.
Perhaps in the light of the global pandemic where in which food waste and hunger are becoming increasingly problematic, it is a clever way to create discussions around the artwork and make people question the meaning behind it.
