Cooking Sections are Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe. Their long-term project CLIMAVORE explores the relationship between how we eat and the climate emergency.
Salmon is usually thought of as pink. The colour is even called ‘salmon pink’. However, farmed salmon today would be grey. To make them the expected colour, synthetic pigments are added to their feed. As Cooking Sections put it, salmon is ‘the colour of a wild fish which is neither wild, nor fish, nor even salmon’. Salmon are farmed in open nets, which severely impact wild salmon populations and marine life across the seabed of the west coast of Scotland.
The changing colours of species are warning signs of an environmental crisis. Many of these alterations result from humans and animals ingesting and absorbing synthetic substances. Changes in flesh, scales, feathers, skin, leaves or wings give us clues to environmental and metabolic transformations around us and inside us. This installation questions what colours we expect in our ‘natural’ environment as our planet changes.
Prompted by this project, farmed salmon has been permanently removed from food outlets at all Tate sites. It has been replaced with ingredients that promote regenerative aquacultures, including bivalves and seaweeds. You can find these menu items at the Djanogly Café and Members Room. This artistic agreement with Cooking Sections solidifies Tate’s commitment to act in the face of the climate emergency.
Cooking Sections are Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe: a duo of spatial practitioners based in London who use installation, performance, mapping and video, to explore the systems that organise the world through food.
Art Now is a series of free exhibitions showcasing emerging talent and highlighting new developments in British art.