Maryam Jafri: Mouthfeel

About

Throughout April and May 2020 Gasworks presents a series of online screenings of artist films commissioned for our exhibitions programme over the last few years. Featuring works by Monira Al Qadiri, Louis Henderson & Filipa César, and Maryam Jafri, each piece will be available to stream on Gasworks’ website for one week and is accompanied by interviews with the artists, audio lectures and reviews.

The third in this series of screenings, Maryam Jafri's short film Mouthfeel explores the politics underpinning the industrial production of food, connecting themes as diverse as “big food”, flavour enhancement technology and overconsumption.

Mouthfeel (21:34 min, 2K HD video with sound) combines staged and found footage to unravel the politics surrounding the mass production of processed food. The staged scenes are based on an original script by the artist and focus on the conversations of a married couple who work for the same food multinational – a cross between Nestlé and Monsanto. Their exchange is inspired by theatre and television, where socio-political analysis is played out through everyday, familial dialogue with large doses of humour, hypocrisy and violence.

Set in the near future, the wife, a leading food technologist, and the husband, a senior brand manager, find themselves stuck in a chauffeur-driven stretch limo at a security checkpoint in an unspecified global city. The wife, played by Jafri, has uncovered a potential health problem with their new product, which her husband is determined to cover up. Along with excerpts of found footage sourced from different countries in the global south and which act as “commercial breaks”, these scenes address themes of convenience, good taste and the disparities between mass and artisanal forms of production.