Visual Diet at M&C Saatchi London
MTArt
London, UK
Visual Diet was an evening of talks and an exhibition hosted by the advertising agency M&C Saatchi at its London offices, organised with MTArt Agency, the London talent agency for visual artists founded by Marine Tanguy. The idea behind it, which Tanguy had first presented in a TEDx talk, is that the images we absorb every day work like food: they can be nourishing or harmful, and an unbalanced diet of processed, body-negative content on social media affects mental health. The initiative was led at M&C Saatchi by Mimi Gray, head of visual content, with the support of the photographer Rankin, and combined a panel on social media and self-image with works by five artists.
Federico Clapis was among the artists shown. The installation view shows a polished gold sculpture from his Connection series on a white plinth in the agency's foyer: the torso of a pregnant woman, cut open to reveal a fetus that looks down at a smartphone held in its hands. Behind it, a wall text in capital letters states that the content we see every day conditions our thoughts and the future generation.
Few works fitted the theme as directly. Clapis, who had first become known through viral videos online before turning to sculpture, had made the relationship between people and their devices one of the central subjects of his work, and the unborn child already absorbed in a screen sums up that concern. Placed in the lobby of a major advertising agency, a place where images for mass audiences are produced, the sculpture took on an added, almost self-critical meaning.