Edible Ephemera

April 10 – 27, 2013. Root Division, San Francisco.

Food can be seductive, nurturing and toxic; it has the power to evoke personal memories and cultural identity; it is political and historical; but it is always temporal. Edible, living things are constantly in flux. When growing food, its form changes over time from seed to plant. In cooking we often combine or alter the physical state of ingredients, and in digestion food becomes nutrients and waste products. Food is not stable, and unless it has been transformed it will not last.

Edible Ephemera examines the fleeting nature of food through art that engages our visual, olfactory and textural senses. Each artist uses ingestibles as initial source material, and then through processes such as alchemy, preservation and documentation, reimagines them in a more permanent state. The finished artwork utilizes transmutation while simultaneously retaining the essence of the original food.

Participating artists: Lynne-Rachel Altman, Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Victoria DeBlassie, Christine Elfman, Julia Goodman, Larissa Erin Greer, Adrienne Pao, Phil Ross, Paolo Salvagione, Leonard Suryajaya, Claudia Tennyson and Rene Yung