Chantal van Can

"The pain of the world is sometimes sickening to me and impossible to deny. It makes me physically uncomfortable, as if I were stepping out of my own will for a moment. I don’t want to suppress that feeling, but to transform it into an experience that speaks to your body. To feel how we live within systems that we often no longer fully comprehend.

My work explores how empathy can arise when we not only understand, but also feel how our food chain is organised. My installation consists of two identical structures made of metal and wood. Indistinguishable from the outside, two different realities emerge inside: the first space refers to industrial pig farming, the second to the living and working conditions of migrant workers within the same chain. Smell, sound and limited space make it palpable what it is like to exist in these conditions. Placing these worlds side by side does not create a literal comparison, but a tension in which connections become palpable: efficiency, control and profit.

My work creates a space where looking away becomes more difficult, where attention and friction coexist alongside empathy. For we are all entangled in the same system: we consume, we are part of economic structures, we benefit and bear the consequences at the same time. In this way, space is created to re-experience and reconsider our relationship with food and the world."