'When Peckham Gives You Plantain, Make Jam' (2024)
videoart still, 2minutes 25seconds, 1200 x 628px
The jam ends a cycle of recycling material which makes justice to its process. The trolley was built from recycled steel, the fruits picked up from local vendors at the end of each day, the jars collected from my community and the jam sold at a changing price making exchange rather than money the currency of my project. I first started this project looking at a mango fruit stand in my hometown Bogotá. I wanted to show admiration for the capacity of survival faced daily back in Colombia where no 2 trolleys look the same and each vendor is both a business and a craftsman. I believe in resourcefulness as a craft in itself. The hustle of informal businesses that exist out of nothing and are constantly adapting. To push my site-specific project onto the gallery space I intervened in the gallery's usual commercial uses by introducing a secondary, informal cash economy as well as immersing the viewer on a material and sensory level by taking everyday materials and placing them in the gallery space. Smells of fruit and the sight of recycled manufactured steel so that the public can relate to the materials and not fear to evaluate the work.
For the exhibit of the trolley at Southpark Galleries, I used the original fruit packaging used to pick up the fruits for its smells, colour and texture to recreate the feel of Peckham marketplace. Rather subconsciously I had been keeping packaging with lexical subtext that spoke to me personally such as 'HISPANO CEBOLLAS' and 'COLOMBA: produce of Colombia'. I chose to hang the orange mesh alike the fruits that had hung from the fruits on my collection journeys to utilize the structure of the trolley for its original purpose. The whole project, both the exhibit of the jam, trolley and film documentary of the same name, had bee a commentary on food wastage and how far this exotic fruits had come just to end up on the streets. The commentary on consumerism and treatment of migrants stayed throughout the project as showed by my display choices and the accessible nature of having jam as consumable prints so that an outside-art-world public could also enjoy art not necessarily having to understand the whole context but simply trusting their tastebuds.
The board placed on top was picked up from a sideroad and drilled in by me for the final display with the same screws I had used for the rest of the trolley. Its rather rough surface and neutral colour was as to not distract from the jam, packaging and structure of the trolley itself.
During the period the show was open to the public I gave away 26 jams, 8 were given throughout the process beforehand and since the exhibition I have made 20 jars more destined to Peckham High Street. The flavours were as follows: blueberry, mango, plantain, banana, pineapple, quince, white guava, apple, pear, tangerine, orange, papaya, avocado, aubergine, lemon, lime, strawberry, and persimmon. I used 3 handheld blenders, 2 tabletop blenders, 4 kitchens and 10 friends as my filming crew for documentation.
