Nightshade, Italian recipes
Nightshade, Italian recipes explores Italian cultural identity at a time when the far right in Italy is in ascendance.
Nationalists often use myths or co-opt symbols to define their nation’s image. Symbols utilised by the far right in Italy have ranged from the cross to the idealised family. Gastronationalism has been used in Italy through a focus on pasta, bread and what is perceived as the ‘Italian diet’, from the time of Mussolini, to the modern era, where small towns such as Lucca have banned foreign restaurants within their city walls. Food is one of the great unifiers and dividers of communities.
For this work, I focus on the tomato as a symbol of Italian cultural identity. A fruit native to the Americas, the tomato is part of the Nightshade family of plants. The Nightshade family includes some of the world’s most familiar vegetables and fruits, as well as one of the most poisonous plants.
Here the forgotten history of the tomato is used to explore how cultural identities are formed. The story of the tomato acts as an analogy to human experience involving a journey of migration, intolerance, acceptance and eventual reverence.
Spanning portraiture, botanical imagery and microscopy, the work questions ways of seeing, emphasising the limitations of labelling and categorisation. The recipes provided in the book are both an offering to the viewer and an invitation to consider a different take on the idea ‘we are what we eat’.
An in progress exploration of the Island of Britain.
