Aberrant Consumers: Representing disordered dating on the still life table

Woolley, Dawn ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6958-5658 (2020) Aberrant Consumers: Representing disordered dating on the still life table. In: World Gastronomy Insitute Global Report 2020. World Gastronomy Institute. ISBN 9788468550633

Abstract

Still-life photographs can reflect a contradictory relationship to contemporary consumer culture. The thin body acts as a sign of a strong work ethic and self-control; it is viewed as a productive resource and medium for creating bodily capital The objects on a still life table allude to the unavoidable bodily requirements of eating and drinking. It is a subject matter contaminated by flesh. Still life images can be viewed as a type of portrait: the objects depicted on the table symbolize the social position and material wealth of an unseen owner, who is also the intended recipient of the meal. Taking my cue from Dutch still-life paintings from the seventeenth century that reflected a conflicting relation with material wealth, I produce still-life photographs that reflect a contradictory relationship to contemporary consumerism. In this article I will present a selection of artworks that draw on my research into eating disorders and body ideals in capitalist societies. The «WGI Global Report 2020 - A Gastronomic Planet» is a succession of approaches and perspectives of what has happened and is happening in the gastronomic world, recording many facts, investigations and opinions that will serve to explain what the situation of gastronomy was in our time, commissioned from the authors and collected in the period from 2018 to 2020, until the COVID19 came to generate suffering, chaos and economic debacle. From this presentation of the publication we want to honor the victims and thank all the people who have fought in solidarity with the pandemic, hoping that the situation will recover as soon as possible and in the next ´Global Report` we can reflect a positive evolution.

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