Anna-Lucie Feracci | About

edible : by elodie silberstein

glorious colours, intricately crafted accessories, girly pink jewellery, the work of anna-lucie feracci as an immediate impact upon us. it is beautiful, immaculately presented and just ready to be sold. but there is a snag : her brand boudoir rose is complety fake.

like the mexican artist minerva cuevas who distributed false student cards and created a micro economy, anna questions the system by articulating truth and lies. her miniatures mimic the new trend in the confectionary industry to present and sell patisseries as if they were luxury items.

the initial impression, whilst being attractive, is deceptive as her work shows a largely darker side and plays with the paradox. one needs to overcome these initial superficial impressions to uncover and appreciate the more subtle layers.

here, the beauty of the jewellery in the form of sushi speaks, amongst other things, of consumption but also of violence. in a similar fashion to hussein chalayan in his movie anaesthetics (2004), anna is fascinated by the paradox between the aesthetics of japanese food and the intrinsic violence of its production.

another primordial aspect of her practice is the use of edible material in her creations. one of her edible installations, invisible cities I, is a city made with hundreds of sugar cubes to symbolise the hidden economics of western cities. this installation referred to the production of sugar, coffee and cacao in third world countries for the sole benefit of the developed world.

in anna's view, " the very fact of making food when making art - and eating art - is a metaphor for art being seen as food for the soul ".

following spoerri's path, anna has accepted an invitation from eat art party to conduct an event. eat art party is a recurring experimental platform for debate and creation over a culinary work realised by an invited artist in a domestic environment.
in the eat art party presented by anna, participants were invited to discuss and eat her sushi collection, a selection of miniatures mixing sushi, japanese cakes and little brain patties turned into a fashion collection. again, reality flirted with illusion as jewellery and edible sushis made of sugar were intermixed leading to confusion in the audience. there is no room here for the superficial as the culinary happening is also a stimulus for critical analysis. in fact the interaction between participants allows artist and audience not to oversimplify the complex nature of questions such as poverty. her work has a direct affiliation with eat art, an art form created in the 1960's by the swiss artist daniel spoerri. spoerri promoted the use of food as a medium and was famous for his restaurant in dusseldorf where guest artists organised special events and art critics waited on the tables. most of the time, the works of art were edible and the public was actively invited to be involved in the creative process and to eat the artistic result.

in fact, what makes the work of anna-lucie feracci so rich is the fact that this work is completely multidimensional. she proposes to us an environment in which ethic and aesthetic are side by side and where the position of the audience is double. we experience it individually through an optical contemplation but also collectively through a convivial and conceptual approach. the position of the audience could be described as "active spectatorship" : rarely have artists offered us a work as complete and polymorphique.