Foodology: Toyoko Shimada

I’m really late reporting this, but I’ve just come back from a hectic time at the Milan Furniture Fair (more on the food-related findings later) and I thought I’d write about Toyoko an artist from Osaka in Japan working in the Netherlands whose work I saw at Platform 21 last March.

Described as “an intercultural, interactive and interdisciplinary art project”, the exhibition Foodology displayed a collection of dresses, jackets, pants, made or adorned with graphical or real elements of food and “low art” of corporate or commercial origins. A few projections of a closeup of a mouth chewing and different plays of light and color created an eery ambiance in the circular room on the top floor.

A jacket made with Kikomann soy sauce labels, a dress embroidered with dried pasta of different shapes, jeans printed with “Fair trade, fear trad”, the whole collection had something of a palpable yet forced cultural criticism.

The principle of it, on paper at least, sounded interesting “art, food and fashion will weave an intimate and accessible crossover visual dialogue with each other artistically, culturally and socially in this project”, but I failed to see that the particular result or perhaps was it the exhibition design, made me question food’s place in commercial culture and how we might see the relationship between fashion and food. In any case it certainly gave me food for thought.