Meet Animal Meat - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Hirotsune Tashima
Moonlight Dinner, 2004 © Hirotsune Tashima
The Meat of the Work: Ceramics
Incorporating Meat Themes
As the materiality and the processes of
clay work may generate meat metaphors, some
artists also take this theme more directly into the
concepts and forms of their work. Patz Fowle’s
Pork Pie exemplifies one of the most overt uses of
meat as food product within a ceramic sculpture.
This sculpture contains hundreds of ceramic pig
faces with prominent snouts baked into a pie, with
a generous slice suggestively removed. The
possibilities of clay as dough are translated quite
literally here. Meanwhile, the “pork berries” of the
pie are cartoonish, even cute, and contrast
strangely with the ominous pools of blood and the
sense that hundreds of pig heads are about to be
(or have already been) consumed.
Fowle notes a psychological dimension in
her work, integrating advocacy for animals that
comes across strongly in other pieces like The
Revenge of the Other White Meat. This piece
features an overweight pig dressed up as a
farmer in overalls holding a Barbie-like human on
a large skewer. Consumption of meat as human
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flesh, but also attractive female flesh, is
highlighted here with a certain gendered
dimension. In both pieces the various forms of
“meat” suggest a sense of vulnerability through
cartoonish iconography. We might also compare
this work with that of Hirotsune Tashima, who often
uses severed human parts paired not only with
meat, but also with sushi rolls, rendered in clay. In
both cases, objects employing aesthetics of
delicacy and/or sweetness are reconfigured to
contain disturbing forms of “meat.”
Returning to the functional vessel, we may
also consider the work of potters Mark Moskovitz
and Bonnie Seeman. Mark Moskovitz creates witty
serving platters: Uptown Meat and Uptown Dairy
inscribed with a flourishing font that reads “meat”
or “dairy.” The inscription repeats in a radial
pattern as an accent to the porcelain plates.
These labels both allude to the function of the
pieces and also highlight the cultural practices of
keeping kosher and the various food taboos
entailed in these practices. The labeling itself is
practical, and yet takes on a tone of irony and
wit. Moskowitz describes the font itself as giving a
“sunny, fifties vibe.”