What standards must be met to label something as art in regards to food and art based on food?
Food is only artful if it evokes emotion. That’s what art does. As so much of our national identity is expressed through rituals, the creation or consumption of specific meals can reflect emotional and cultural experiences.
Henry Hargreaves’ artwork depicted countries made of common representations of food, like a kiwifruit New Zealand. And it’s great art, but I’m talking about the meals which have a very personal cultural representation. Siliga David Setoga described living out his Samoan culture through sharing KFC with his famiy, which was highly comforting for him. In this way, any food which unites national culture and personal emotion must be classified as art.
This emotional significance is why sometimes I feel I’m not German enough, based off my distance at home from typical German cuisine. Don’t ask me what Germans eat, because I really don’t know. The only dish with any German significance to me – a potato gratin – doesn’t signify my culture, but rather my family. My Oma packed a lot of love into that dish, and so eating it in New Zealand is acknowledgement of our family, not of our Germanness. Cooking it is a ritual which creates more familiarity than any painting, pottery or prose ever could.
Culture is so dynamic that one single food could never mean the same thing to everyone. Instead, specific meals can inspire emotion and appreciation for one’s culture in an artful way.
I really liked how you highlighted that one can be disconnected with the food that supposedly forms their national identity. As a Pakeha, I feel the food that is supposed to form our identity is really a melting pot of international influences. Like fish and chips, tea and pies. When I eat these foods they don’t build a national identity for me, rather, they highlight how fractured a Pakeha’s identity is.
So I relate with you in how the ‘typical’ meaning of food can be manipulated by the individual. Like you said, “one single food could never mean the same thing to everyone.” We identify for ourselves the food that forms our identity. That is why my identity is Mac n’ Cheese, and I guess only I will understand why, but that’s ok.
I think you make a really strong case for putting family above culture. I like the idea of it being more meaningful for individuals to have experiences rather than having a collective build up of rituals and foods contributing to the creation or maintenance of a culture.There will never be a complete consensus on what foods make a culture. In my family alone there is so much friction regrading what food is the best reflection of our culture. Pretty unrealistic to expect an entire culture to choose one. Therefore, I really like how you’ve highlighted singular experiences.