Panela Con Limón Painting

Sugar is used as a medium in this work, mixed with oil painting pigments. It is a paradoxical material that encapsulates a complicated relationship of consumption and excess with the human body, and metaphorically, the land. Sweetness is associated with the alchemical operation of coagulatio, the turning of something ephemeral into something solid and concrete, also proposing a fear of calcification or stagnation of something that is liquid and free flowing. The work is deeply rooted in material experience; engaging with the olfactory senses and taste as a way interact with objects in a haptic way. A reading of Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’ has been a central point of research. He writes of viscous liquid and sweetness as an anti-matter, that which transgresses its materiality and simply exists, as atemporal and unaffected, as both being and nothingness. The works are the antithesis of commodification and challenge our experience of value, taste, labour and digital industrialisation. The medium of sugar creates a dialogue about consumption that is poignant for our time, where our desires remain fixed against an increasing shortage and uncertainty about future resources.