Decorating Greengrocers: (and yes) food is already a work of art

It can also be “art as food”, suggests the titles Diana Aisenberg, a woman who, as the writer María Gainza defined her, can hang paintings in composition with armchairs, vases and teapots and, at the same time, problematizing the rules of art etiquette “with insidious candor”. Here’s what it is.

References to art are everywhere. The name that gives life to the project is Kiosk of artists (KDA) and the slogan reads beautifully suspended on a theoretical basis: “If artists were flowers, KDA would be a garden.”

If life is made up of small details, it is best to observe the eyes of the tuned eggplant. They tell us: eggplants are like meat for vegetarians. Genres are becoming increasingly blurry. It could have happened to Marta Minujín. Hand.

-Are there any food artists?

– Exactly, a while ago. Artists make events, they include part of the population. The artistic product as something is still questioned. A painting, a sculpture on a base, those things that are in museums …

Still lifes have always been painted in the History of Art, especially since the 16th century, when fruit and vegetables appeared as a genre and motif in art. It is then that fruits and vegetables become a reason to paint.

An artist with a long career

Inside the sceneDiana Aisenberg is a generation older than Marta. We are speaking, however, of 40 years of experience.

-But Marta is better known …

-Yup.

-Because?

-There are many artists like me, more or less known. There are others who are more carefree. And there are, as always, the “cult” ones. I am known for my career and my school, where many famous artists come from. Good artists, workers, serious …

-Talented?

-And, yes, they have made a career as artists. Do I give you the names? They live on art, but there are many ways of living art. There is a circuit which is the circuit mainstreambut there are many possibilities to make a living with art without being in that circuit.

Food as a problem

About the greengrocers KDA operates as a response to the crisis. Aisenberg talks about going out accompanied. Winning the street is a form of militancy. He says that they have made dozens of interventions: exhibitions in goods (“circulation of works”), inaugurations of cultural centers, kermesse. They have occupied entire homes offering artists’ products and services.

The greengrocer appears because food – and not only she says it – “is a problem”.

-How close is the artist to social consciousness?

-The social conscience of the young artist is permanent and translates into concern and matter: the state of the Earth, the products, the making of food! This is a theme of humanity rather than art.

When we imagine this may be colored by your child, or when we get a little nervous to the point of not paying attention, there, right there, at that moment, we think – how would I say Maria Gainza– that Aisenberg’s ornamental should make us think twice the next time it occurs to us to underestimate something “decorative”.

kami koni is a student-artist of Diana. Like Francisca Amigo or Dana Ferrari, she is part of the project: “Chatting with a vegetable cooperative of Bartolomé Miter and Ayacucho, we came up with the idea of ​​proposing the event. I took care of this personally ”, she warns her about what it is called “Living still life”.

The idea: “add a cultural invasion to a commercial space“. How did they do the entre? “Easy, they recovered, they loved the installation problem. We exchanged views on how to merge with space using sounds and taking the concept of Still lifesomething that is repeated a lot in the history of art, like painting apples, but giving them life.

-Do you sell decorated fruit and vegetables?

-No, but they could. It’s a good idea…

Diana’s proposal is delusional and subversive. Delusional, because she paints vegetables without worrying too much about her “canvas” in her turn. Subversive because, under her naivety, one discovers something more than a child making faces.

-Diana, what does an artist do when he is not making art?

-Things that interest him and then enter his works. The limits of art are blurred and need to be redefined. The market, the idea of ​​beauty, everything is in decline. But the artist’s urgency remains. The alienation is total. There are no limits because there is no trust and because resources are running out.

Nobody cares about 15th century ideals of beauty. There is internet, there are cell phones, the artist is no longer what he was …

-Why should 15th century beauty care?

-It must not be of interest, but there are concepts: the galleries are closing, in times of crisis nothing is being sold. There is a movement towards digital products, there is a whole questioning of the market from the United States. You don’t know very well where to grow anymore.

– Are the paintings not being sold?

-Sales have dropped a lot and emerging artists live in a state of mutation. It is very difficult to survive, there is less and less support from the state and When there is a crisis, the first thing that closes is the Culture. Curiously, with sadness and gloomy views, the artists appear. Art is a need of the soul. There was a time when it was a promise to be an artist …

One fine day, the group gets together and decides it’s time to do it canonize raw material. They go to a grocery store in the Monserrat neighborhood. Aisenberg will say “install” because they literally go and install themselves.

– “Hello, we come to decorate the mandarins”. Something like that?

-No, the idea wasn’t just alone. In the proposal there are also fairs on the sidewalk, we talk about cooperatives, we teach how to work, we learn how to make homemade desserts. It consists in realizing the possibilities that emerge from the crisis. Pumpkin soaps, cakes …

-The artist has to make the cakes …

-Visual art combined with cooking, theater. And this happens because the problem of art and life never stops.

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