I’ve gotta say that I’ve never been the biggest fan of modern art installations – I guess I just don’t get them man – but I feel like there’s at least something funny about someone dropping off 29 tonnes of carrots outside of Goldsmith’s University.
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The carrots were delivered to the university on Wednesday and initially nobody knew why that had happened or who was behind it. The truth was eventually revealed though through via Goldsmith’s own Twitter account, who disclosed the following information:
It is an installation called ‘Grounding’ by the artist and MFA student Rafael Perez Evans. His work is part of Goldsmiths’ MFA degree show. Rafael has arranged for the carrots to be removed at the end of the exhibition and donated to farm animals.https://t.co/EXzT9zZjws
— Goldsmiths (@GoldsmithsUoL) September 30, 2020
OK cool, but what’s it actually all about? Here’s what Perez Evans’ website says about the project:
Bringing into contact two disparate forms: a large contemporary glass university building and fresh carrots, Perez Evans borrows the gesture of dumping from European farmers’ protests to transform it into a sculptural tool for grounding. The therapeutic technique of grounding involves doing activities that ‘ground’ or electrically reconnect you to the earth.
Dumping is a 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. This devaluation often produces an enforced invisibility, which is often reciprocated by farmers who create hyper-visible gestures by dumping their devalued produce. Vegetables such as carrots or potatoes become monumental barricades that can block governmental buildings or roads and with it interrupt the usual city flow.
The city is a site that suffers from food, plant and soil blindness, a place hyper separated from its periphery, its food and its labourers. Dumping protests bring blinded city people into an alarming contact with their forgotten foods and its production.
Sounds deep man. I’m sure Perez Evans has the best of intentions with all of that, but I’m sure that most people are probably only going to remember that someone dropped a lot of carrots outside Goldsmith’s and it was really stupid though, that’s it. This is the danger of modern art though I suppose.
For more carrots, check out when a dog died after being physically abused with a carrot. Tragic.
