My contribution to Gendai Gallery’s food-themed multiple series, Kitchen, consisted of a set of three wooden salt cellars, each containing synthetic recreations of three human body salts: tears, sweat, and urine. Using the average ratios of elements found in these salts—sodium, calcium, nitrogen, etc.—I created edible analogs to materials that we expel or secrete.
It is argued (and contested) that salt is humanity’s oldest currency, a story that has left vestigial etymological traces in the English language—salary or salacious, for example. Salt also brokers exchange at a molecular level; salt is responsible for fluid exchange across cell borders. I was inspired by this metaphorical correspondence, and to further amplify the connection, I inserted the salt of a body into a capitalist circuit of exchange by creating a set of ostensible seasonings that were at once too precious (by virtue of being artworks) and too gross (by virtue of their abstract relationships to abject substances) to use for cooking.
For the launch of my edition of the multiple, I hosted a dinner party at the Theatre Centre in Toronto. The menu consisted of dishes created to draw out and amplify common associations and symbolism: an asparagus canape with labneh on a rice cracker, all seasoned with urine salt; sourdough bread made with sweat salt, a miso and sesame cookie finished with tear salt; gose (a salted German ale) brewed with sweat salt.
Sweat Salt 10x Magnification
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Sweat Salt 50x Magnification Brightfield
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Urine Salt 50x Magnification Brightfield
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Sweat Salt 50x Magnification
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Urine Salt 50x Magnification
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Image by Laura Margaret Ramsay
Multiple commissioned and produced by Gendai Gallery.
The dinner party was prepared in collaboration with Stuart Sakai.