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Orange Candies ver. 2.0
In Orange Candies ver. 2.0, I attempt to examine multinational capitalism manifested through the commodity of candy — namely, orange-flavored candies. Referring to the Zagat Survey, I drove around the greater Los Angeles area and visited a number of stores and ethnic supermarkets in order to obtain various kinds of orange candies. As a result, I gathered more than one hundred orange candies whose origins ranged from Croatia to the Philippines, of which only sixteen of them were made in the United States. I digitized what I collected – I scanned the front and back of each package/container, and then the individual wrappers and the candies proper. The scanned images were arranged in a grid format and made into four large-scale digital photographic prints. The first two prints feature images of the front and back of each candy package. The third print shows the individually wrapped candies, while the last print was filled with the “naked” candies. Finally, I pulverized all the different orange candies together, offering viewers the platonic ideal of orange candy through its synthesis. The resulting powder was put inside small glass vials. Ninety-six of these vials were placed on a pedestal next to the four photographic prints. The grid format of this piece functions to bridge the four prints together. The placement of each candy within the grid is consistent throughout the prints. For instance, the American-manufactured Lifesaver always appears on the far left corner on the top row; the Philippines-made Halls is always 7th from the right and 5th from the top. Orange Candies ver. 2.0 is an allegory of the cultural homogenization via commodity. All of the candies collected contained similar artificial flavorings, smell, and colorants. Only a small percentage of the ingredients differed from one to another. This fact overtly speaks to the homogenization of taste via commodity. The powdered candy inside the glass vials is the satirized concretization of this process. |