In plate 51 of Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War series, men and women in rags claw at a pot of food while children wait. Adults who bypass children to feed themselves first: This is what Spaniards are reduced to in the aftermath of the French Revolution that Goya, and so many democratic liberals, once idealized. “Gracias á la almorta,” Goya’s caption reads, “la almorta” referring to the wild pea that can be a staple in famine-struck lands and was in Spain in the early 1800s.
In a cruel twist of biology, though, a diet made entirely of wild peas is poisonous. To Goya’s point: We eat systems, not just foods.
The Seattle artist Jason Hirata used plate 51 as part of the basis for Fodder and Options, his two new related installations riffing on the global corporate food system at Henry Art Gallery…
