Artist Gets Up Close and Personal With Food

Using Latin in the title of a photo project, or anything really, is a gamble; but for an exhibition that showcases a literally in-depth look at food, it’s quite fitting – after all, if the linguistically-inclined takes a closer look at our dictionary, they’ll find quite a few Latin roots. Terra cibus, which roughly translates as Nourishment of the Earth, is Caren Alpert’s innovative way of tackling our obsession with food. She uses food as lab fodder, puts it under the microscope, but not to see what makes it tick – in stead, her purpose is to have us relate to food from an artistic, intellectual rather than basic, viewpoint, and it’s less about the scientific tools she uses to create that overarching view.

A self-styled “fine art photography student, turned photo editor, turned commercial photographer, turned fine artist,” Alpert has worked with food for a living throughout most of her professional career, before turning the delicious tools of her trade into a veritable muse. Food, and especially its odd-looking molecular structure, inspired the artist to engage with it at a level that most of us additives-and-preservatives-phages nowadays never do – it’s at this intimate level that what we so casually ingest becomes immortalized as more than just a basic need. This temporary belly top-up is a wondrous thing, if viewed in the right light – a world onto itself, of colors and patterns… of good or toxic.

“The closer the lens got, the more I saw food and consumers of food (all of us!) as part of a larger eco-system than mere sustenance.” (Caren Alpert)