Consumption

Artist Statement: On a trip to a rural city in China during an internship, the other interns and I were invited to eat lunch by the government. The city was one of the poorest there was in the country, but we were still provided a large meal full of different foods. However, midway into the lunch, many people at the table started disregarding the food in favor of using their phones, and we ended up leaving a lot of the dishes unfinished or completely untouched. I wanted to depict this concept of consuming the content online instead of the food given, with the two characters both doing this despite being from different generations. I hope to bring attention to what can be missed when using a device, and that we can accidentally disregard things that others do for us and the circumstances we’re in when we get wrapped up in the phone. I chose this piece because it’s something I saw in real life that happens constantly, and I hope that through painting I can somewhat make up for the food that we wasted. To prepare for this piece, I took several photos of the food leftover when we were done for reference.