Foodculture: Tasting Identities and Geographies in Art

Why has history viewed the enjoyment of food as a lower form of artistic pleasure? The writers and artists? in this anthology have addressed this question by taking a renewed interest in the symbolic value of food? and eating as well as in the rituals of preparation and consumption.

In their interrogation of "foodculture" in art, they investigate food in all its materiality, its social value? and its power to transform our culture - from the role of food in aesthetic concepts throughout history? to modern concerns with global food production and distribution. Foodculture focuses on food as a site? of negation in the relations between East and West, between colonizer and colonized, as well as in the? formation of cultural and personal identity in an increasingly globalized world.

Barbara Fischer was curator of the Canadian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale, and is the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, as well as Senior? Lecturer in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto. She has held curatorial positions in galleries? and museums across Canada. Fischer was the recipient of the 2008 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for? Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art.