The Dirty Job, Katherine Chong

18" x 24" x 2". Wooden frame, paper, printed vellum, plexiglass, cellophane, alcohol markers, LED strip, wax paper, 2021.

When supplied with packaged meat in supermarkets, the public rarely thinks twice about how the food arrived at its convenient final form.We are blissfully detached from the ugly mechanisms that are necessary to churn out results. In this piece, I invite viewers to contemplate the ethics of industrial societies, where countless truths are tucked under curated facades. With the presence and absence of light, the two overlapping images in this work manifest such a duality. Faceless, blood-stained strangers bear the guilt of slaughter so the rest of us would not have to. Should the comfort of a mass majority be secured with the pain of a vulnerable few? Or should all suffer the consequences of our consumption? Through manipulation of light and shadow, I hope to reveal a reality that is often shut behind closed doors.