Gastropoda

Joan Fontcuberta lives in a rural area with high humidity. The mailman deposits his mail in a post office box outside the gate. If the mail is not picked up soon, wild snails (of the gastropoda class) flock to eat the paper of the invitation cards of museums and galleries, which are usually illustrated with reproductions of photographs and other types of artwork.

Beyond a melancholic recycling of art (art as "food"), this project symbolically alludes to the degradation of the image, emphasizing its transition from simple representation to physical object, from pure visual form without "flesh" to tangible material.

On the other hand, it invites us to rethink the concepts of author, creation and work. Here the photophagous snails (or "photo-eaters") play the role of authors by proxy, absolutely indifferent to any discourse surrounding their voracity and the significance assigned to their excrement. The result is disfigured representations that perpetuate the metabolic cycle of images.