Two local photographers are on their second leg of a traveling exhibition in Ohio, commenting on food insecurity and justice in areas still impacted by food apartheid.
The exhibition, titled “The Price of Eggs,” will be on display at Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland through Aug. 2.
WYSO’s Shay Frank sat down with the artists Jalisa Robinson and Glenna Jennings to learn more about the message behind the immersive exhibition.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Shay Frank: When you first came in, you told me you guys met in kind of a fun, unique way – how did you come together and become this like art powerhouse?
Jalisa Robinson: Well, I was a student at the University of Dayton and that's where Glenna and I first met. She was actually one of my professors.
Glenna Jennings: Jalisa was part of the first cohort that established our trajectory of research into food justice, which is called Desert Kitchen Collective. So it's a really loose organization, comprised of students, faculty, community advocates. It's just anybody who cares about creating access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food in the Miami Valley.
Frank: Since you've started working with Gem City Market, has that inspired your artwork any further, having been working in that community as well?
Robinson: Oh, absolutely. A lot of my work is centered around Dayton. Just being from Dayton and watching the city transform over time, and then definitely the arts and social practice definitely influence the kind of socially engaged aspect of it as well.
Frank: You explore food apartheid, redlining, community resistance through the lens of everyday nourishment. Can you explain what that means? And then we'll go further into the depths and the details of this exhibit.
Robinson: When I was younger, we had access to food, we had many different grocery stores on the west side of Dayton. But over time, you saw that disinvestment in our community and those big retail grocery stores kind of disappearing, leaving us in what they called a food desert at the time. And so our work primarily focused around that aspect of it.
Jennings: Yeah, and then flash forward — Jalisa and I started working on this project in 2024, when we were invited to participate in "Ohio Now: State of Nature," curated by Theresa Bembnister. And we really wanted to create something new.
The political stories about people wanting cheaper groceries and the bird flu affecting the availability and the cost, eggs just seemed like this perfect sort of orb and vessel that we could use metaphorically to tell a lot of stories.
Robinson: In our storytelling, we also focus on the story of Gem City Market, which represents a solution, like when the community came together to create Gem City Market as a solution to the food access issue in West Dayton.
In store, we also have many different local vendors, Irby's Old School Farm being one of them. Which is a local Black-owned farm here in the community.
Frank: You worked with them, as you said, to kind of have these eggs on deck ready to go for the visual aspect as well. Can we talk about what the artwork looks like?
Jennings: Indeed, eggs are harmed in the making of this work.
The wallpaper that I designed, the rule is simply that it's supposed to be made from photographs – It's composed of 111 portraits. The color scheme is based on the market's colors, which were determined before it opened and also based on designs from Yetunde Rodriguez. And so we wanted people to get that feeling of being at Gem City Market.
Underneath the shoppers are reconstructed maps of redlining from 1937. And, these maps having this aesthetic quality but representing systemic racism so blatantly, and yet we wanted to put the shoppers of the present day on top of those maps to show that we are moving away from this issue. But we're very much still encumbered by the very real history of redlining and disinvestment that happened in Dayton.
Robinson: On top of the wallpaper, you have the images of the eggs in all the different forms from when we played around in the studio. When we froze eggs and we fried eggs and we put lights in the cracked eggshells to kind of create these illusions. And those are framed actually in wood that was repurposed from the tornado a few years back.
Frank: I know both of you talked about using this imagery that when you first see it, you don't necessarily immediately recognize the deeper message behind it. And I think that's also reflected in how people look at food insecurity. Do either of you want to talk about how this artwork comments on that.”
Jennings: These geographic spaces are indeed not caused by science, they are caused by human disinvestment, which is why we now prefer the term food apartheid. But they will affect everyone regardless of your identity or your positionality.
Robinson: A really good book that was recommended to me was The Collective Courage.
There's so many different events and people involved around the city. Montgomery County Food Equity Coalition, those different groups, and just educating yourselves on the things that are going around, that are happening in the city in regards to food justice and food systems.
Frank: So now that it is in Cleveland, and you said it's closing in August, is it going anywhere next or is that the end of this traveling exhibit?
Robinson: The end of this traveling exhibit, but, Glenna and I, we have some things up our sleeves and we definitely want to continue this work going forward.
Jennings: Yeah, we're open to invitations. Invite us to dinner.
