My Things - Tian A
Hong Hao
洪浩
Production date
2008
Object Detail
Media
digital print of scanned images
Measurements
120 x 198 cm
Notes
My Things—Tian A (2008) is almost two-and-a-half square metres of scanned confectionary: bright, shiny packages promising tooth-aching sweetness. When all these packages of individually wrapped chocolates, sweets and jellies are presented as a vast field, the effect is almost sickening. Initially mouth-wateringly desirable, the surfeit now prompts disgust. We think of how the recent corporatisation of food production has changed Chinese eating habits, bringing in its wake obesity and diabetes. Consumption is an ideology, says Hong Hao, that drives our desires and controls our behaviours. In a repurposing of Descartes’s maxim, perhaps today the famous phrase is better rendered as ‘I consume, therefore I am’. My Things—Tian A, more than being simply an inventory of mass-produced sweetness, reveals our relationships with the substances and products we consume.
Accession number
2015.176