#defabriek

METEN IS WETEN (MEASURING IS KNOWING) … LUNA BENGOECHEA AT DE FABRIEK*

All images by Gemma Medina, 2018.

Luna Bengoechea has modelled an artistic language that uses seeds, grains, and other botanical elements to express her ideas. She uses the aesthetic experience of her installations to interpret, translate, and draw us closer to the macrostructures of the food market that would remain otherwise hidden and which show the other side of the ethical and aesthetic systems that govern society in its current neoliberal framework. As consumers, this positions us as the last links in a chain of which we are a part, whether consciously or unconsciously. In either case, we seem to have a very little leeway. Or do we? We are like the pawns on a chessboard or like the seeds: the simplest elements are at the same time the origin of everything.

Riding on the train from Eindhoven to Rotterdam, one passes through an almost-continuous landscape of fields. Most of the crops grown here are not destined for human consumption. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than 70 percent of the cereals and grains harvested in ‘developed countries’ are produced to fatten farm animals. Jean Meyer, a nutritionist at Harvard University, says that reducing meat production by only 10 percent would yield enough grain to feed at least 60 million people. Based on this data, Bengoechea, during her residency at De Fabriek, has investigated the production of corn as fodder at the local, European, and global levels, developing a reflection that starts with Eindhoven’s agricultural context and which has evolved at De Fabriek, because its space is similar to those of large greenhouses and industrial agricultural farms. Infected by the experimental spirit of the space, the artist has expanded her methodology by introducing new materials, broadening references, and addressing for the first time from the botanical the problem of consumption and production of meat on a large scale.  

Text published as part of the residency and exhibition of Luna Bengoechea at De Fabriek, Eindhoven, 28 September 2018. Read the full text here