Oh yeah. It's just a simple cucumber is the first part of the ongoing project In my food opinion which questions What our food identity is, What the personal perception of food is and Why food or anything else changes its properties when taken out of its context.
Eindhoven – a home of a vast number of immigrant communities, inspired the artist to start this project. As a foreigner herself, Zlatina conducted a short survey among the immigrants about the feeling of being far from home. The majority of the respondents answered that they miss the most the traditional food and the dishes they used to prepare at home.
Not surprisingly, Zlatina tracked down about 25 shops selling traditional foreign food in the center of Eindhoven alone. Most of these food products have travelled a long distance to reach the respective community. Globally, the transportation plays a significant role in the food supply and has led to an increase in the environmental, social and economic burden associated with it. However, this is a price any immigrant would pay to consume a delicacy from his homeland.
In this first part of the project, the artist selected food samples based on the country of use, shape, popularity and most importantly, based on the fact that all food products (with very few exceptions) have been produced abroad and imported into the Netherlands.
As a real archeologist, Zlatina discovered a big variety of unknown for her food products. Brought from far away, this food means so much to one person and nothing to another. For a stranger like Zlatina, taken out of its context, this foreign food is blank, tasteless, irrelevant to this place and time. Casted in fine porcelain and terracotta with a delicate touch of glaze, the food samples are presented as precious artefacts of an archaeological exposition.
