SWALLOW IT WHOLE
A group exhibition in Long Island City, Queens, November 2008
An excerpt from the Swallow It Whole show description by Anwar Montasir:
Swallow It Whole was initially organized in response to Michael Pollan’s description of what he
terms “Supermarket Pastoral,” a practice led by Whole Foods Market of relying on pleasing literature
and imagery to mask the inadequacies of an $11 billion dollar organic food industry. According to a
Whole Foods marketing consultant referenced by Pollan, the Whole Foods shopper is directed to feel
that by buying organic “he is engaging in authentic experiences and imaginatively enacting a return to a
utopian past with the positive aspects of modernity intact.” Knowing that large urban populations
cannot presently be served entirely by small, self-sustaining farms, the seven artists participating in
Swallow It Whole do not offer a polemic against the Whole Foods model – which is not without its positives
– but rather an attempt to shatter the seductive illusions offered by the Whole Foods marketing
campaigns and shopping experience.