Brain food

Sara Asnaghi's brain sculptures, made from edible materials, encourages thinking about what we eat and explores notions of materiality.

It’s the end of the year and so you’ll be excused if you have grain for brains at the moment! Or does your brain feel rather like breadcrumbs?Or how about fun rainbow sprinkles?

Milan-based artist and designer Sara Asnaghi created a series of sculptures that depict the human brain, using edible materials.

Asnaghi explains that the project was inspired by the famous “we are what we eat” quote by the philosopher Feuerbach, but looked at from the point of genetic mutation. The reality is that most of the food we eat has been treated with chemicals and undergone processes of genetic manipulation. Asnaghi's work then asks questions about the effect of these chemicals and processes on our bodies.

With this project Asnaghi also wanted to comment on the large variety of food that is available in “rich” countries, questioning whether advertising encourages us to eat more than we need to. As such, the work draws attention to the fact that we need to think (using our brains) about what and how much we eat.

Asnaghi’s brain sculptures were all made with edible material, such as barley grains, sugar, rice, lentils, coffee, pasta, chilli and hemp seeds.

The brain sculptures play with notions of materiality and context, while also questioning the definition of food and its place in art.