M(eat) You Tomorrow

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Artist: Leisa Rich

Title: M(eat) You Tomorrow

Attribution: M(eat) You Tomorrow, 2022, Leisa Rich

Year: 2022

Materials: New/recycled fabrics; vintage needlepoint, thread, dyes, wood, acrylic, PLA, found objects

Dimensions: 82” X 112” X 15”

Image Statement: In 1987 I read the book, "Diet For A New America" and my eating habits and belief systems were forever changed. Since early homo sapiens fashioned tools to crack open an animal skull and extract its brain - providing high density nutrition - meat was fundamental to human evolution and agrarian community-building. A radical shift has been reshaping that narrative as environmental destruction, health issues, and questions of animal rights, have forced a social and personal reckoning upon us. The science of the future is NOW, with lab-grown meat - that IS exactly the animal, without the field and farm - from stem cells grown in bio-reactors, meaning that people can have their cake and eat it, too. "M(eat) You Tomorrow" traces the past and morphs it into the future. Using historic techniques - quilting, sewing, dyeing - along with current technologies of 3D printing and laser cutting, I visualize a new realty in which animals are no longer kept in cages.