Event #4 - Staring in the Age of Destruction -- S.A.D.

For my fourth event, I attended the Staring in the Age of Destruction exhibition. S.A.D. consisted of many different works with many different artists. After looking around for a fair amount of time, I came across Lydia Gu's "The Melting Pot." Initial sticking out because of the intriguing progression of the piece, I later found it to be the most interesting and relevant to our class due to the meaning behind it.

"The Melting Pot" is a series of images beginning with what appears to be a bountiful and varied arrangement of food, and ending with a metal tray filled with white shapes. After talking to Lydia about the piece, I learned that it was inspired mostly by the recent presidential campaign of none other than Donald Trump himself. Lydia explained that so much of American food is influenced by the many different ethnic groups in the US, making our food a, "melting pot." She also explained how Trump has made assertions to ban certain ethnic groups, should he come into presidency. Taking these together, Lydia's piece is meant to show what would happen to the future of our cuisine should we lose our ethnic diversity.

I really enjoyed this specific work because I felt it to be the most relevant to what is going on in the world today. It is no secret that Trump's election has stirred up many undesirable feelings across the globe. By using food, Lydia is able to comment on an extremely touchy subject in a relaxed way. Though the piece only shows the progression of American foods, it also serves as a metaphor to what could happen in other areas. One of America's greatest strengths is that it is a melting pot and that there is huge amount of diversity everywhere you go. It is diversity that makes not only our food amazing, but also our schools, our community, and our day to day interactions.

I believe Lydia's "Melting Pot" ties in perfectly with our class because it utilizes art to discuss and portray something that is not normally easy to discuss. However, rather than making a scientific concept more easily understandable, it makes a huge social issue present in modern society more easily understandable. As we have seen time and time again, art can serve as an excellent vessel for bringing more complicated subjects to the attention of the public, making it invaluable to many aspects of our lives. As with my other events, I would also highly recommend the S.A.D. exhibition to anyone in the class. It took the concept of art helping science and applied it to social norms, reinforcing everything we have been discussing for the past quarter.

Food with diversity -> Food without