2.37: Creative: Solidarity for Food Businesses

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Page ID: 21019

Annika Walsh
eCampus Ontario

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Follow the SPoons

Annika Walsh is a transdisciplinary artist who was born in Chuzhou, China and adopted at 11 months of age by her family in Canada. She works with a variety of ingredients, materials, and collaborators to form her conceptual pieces. Her practice ranges from exploration of cultural identity to participatory food performances, and everything in between. Striving to blur the lines and push the boundaries, Annika makes a habit of traversing many disciplines, including sculptural installation, performance, and media.

Follow The Spoons (Oct. 2020)

“Follow the Spoons” is a non-invasive public intervention that invests in the community and advocates for the importance of people. During COVID pandemic-related shutdowns, Wellington Village in Ottawa, Ontario began to shift and suffer. The local food establishments are very dependent on everyone in the neighbourhood and were in need of public engagement. This intervention served as a reminder to the community that these businesses needed help. Leveraging the flow of people going in and out of the newly built Tunney’s Pasture O-Train transit station, I placed flattened spoons in the area, labeled with the names of restaurants and food shops, and pointed in the general direction where they were located. During difficult times, I encourage this initiative to spread throughout the city, with many people participating in a movement of collective solidarity.

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A Vimeo element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: https://pb.libretexts.org/food/?p=202

Exercise

Grab some paper, tape, and spoons!

Then write down a list of local restaurants or food businesses that deserve some love and attention from your neighbourhood. Cut out the list of names and tape them onto your flattened spoons. If you do not have a hammer to flatten out the spoons, don’t worry about it! Concave surfaces work too, or you can use chopsticks or any other utensil you have access to! Take your labelled spoons and tape them onto a signpost in a semi–high traffic area, wherever they will be easily and frequently seen.