WE FOUND FOOD

What does it mean to “find food”? As if it simply lay there, ready to be picked up—without effort, without context. In the exhibition We Found Food, Cecilia Sterner explores our relationship to food, agriculture and landscape. Through video works and installations with sculptural elements, the narrative moves in the intersection between history, place and body.

The exhibition has grown out of the place itself. The former barn, now an art gallery, once housed cows and pigs. Today, the building bears other traces—of art, flea markets, and storage. In this layered environment the site offers found objects, memories, materials, sounds, atmospheres. Subtle interventions, stagings, and displacements activate the space and open up new ways of seeing—both the art and our everyday reality.

The title suggests a child’s gaze—or perhaps an adult’s denial: We found food. But what do we really know about how food ends up on our tables? Who produces it, and at what cost? In a society where discussions about food are dominated by nutrition, diets, and body ideals, the conditions of production are often overshadowed. At the same time, other contemporary phenomena—like recordings of barns or irrigation systems used to fall asleep—reveal a lingering, if vague, longing for closeness to the soil.

The questions are approached not by explaining, but by shifting, placing side by side, and listening. The attention is directed to the system we are all part of—and how hard it is to change once it is in place. In the video installation The Birth, a calving is projected onto plastic hanging from the ceiling. The birth is assisted but everything goes well. This, too, becomes an image of labor conditions, the cost of care, and nature’s role in what we call culture.

WE FOUND FOOD, 2025
Eggs, a glass of milk and carrots 

STUCK, 2025
Steel gates, rubber glove and plaster

GIVE SOME,  GET SOME, 2025 
Steel gates and clay

A JOYOUS MOMENT, 2025
Steel gates and silk ribbons

THE QUEST, 2025
Wigs and manure pile

A RESCUE ATTEMPT, 2025   
Beets, transfer bags, plastic hoses, sink, pump etc.

CHALLENGER XXL, 2025
plow and videoloop 1:50 min(found footage)

THE BIRTH, 2025
Plastic, hay and video loop 15 min(found footage)

SLEEP TIGHT, 2025
The sound of a sprinkler system and blue strobe light.