The Measure of Rice
The Measure of Rice evolved from the material I collected, as a way to visualise the relative importance of rice as part of people’s diets across the globe. The shapes refer to traditional containers, like a Kichwa mocahua bowl from Ecuador or an Ancient Roman dish from Italy. So many stories of rice became interwoven with those receptacles! A procession of colorful shapes that refer to cultures on all continents.
- Project:
- Let’s Talk About Rice
Annual rice consumption
Each pot represents a specific country and its size indicates the exact amount of rice eaten by one person annually. The people of Bangladesh, for instance, are most dependent on rice: they consume 172.62 kg a year. In a further reflection on diversity, I mixed the clay with uncooked local rice varieties that burn away in the kiln to mark the works with their distinct, poetic traces.
During the lock-down
3.8 kg is the average annual rice consumption in the Netherlands. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, three and a half times more rice was purchased in the third week of the lock-down in March 2020. You can tell exactly how much that is from the difference between these two objects.
For NL 3.8 kg I used quick-cooked rice as a decoration material.
