EAT ME DRINK ME: food for thought

EAT ME DRINK ME is an art project that uses the visual language of modern European haute cuisine as a conceptual device, not as subject matter. It takes the form of an 18-course tasting menu, realised as 18 synthographs generated with Flux.2 Pro, but it is not concerned with food photography in the conventional sense. Drawing on French technique and contemporary fine-dining aesthetics, the work presents dishes that appear immaculate, confident, and aspirational. At first, everything signals quality and control: pristine plating, careful restraint, ingredients that imply expense and expertise. The food looks edible, safe, and desirable — designed to be trusted.

That trust, however, begins to erode. Course by course, refinement slips into excess and precision into unease. Not through shock or overt grotesquery, but through quiet misalignment: portion sizes increase, flavours intensify, the plates become crowded, and techniques appear over-engineered rather than cooked. Surfaces remain flawless, yet something subtly refuses to settle. The project traces a deliberate arc from seduction to excess, from doubt to discomfort, and finally to refusal. By the midpoint, appetite falters; by the final plates, consumption no longer feels appropriate or even possible. This is not a meditation on neglect, dirt, or poor hygiene, but an exploration of how good taste can leave a bad taste — how beauty, taken slightly too far, can begin to imply danger.

The project is built around a fixed photographic grammar: a bird's-eye view, the complete plate fully visible, isolated within a neutral studio void, with white porcelain acting as a canvas. Removed from kitchens, restaurants, and service, the plate exists solely for inspection. The overhead view removes hospitality and replaces it with scrutiny. Appetite gives way to interpretation. What might initially resemble food photography resolves instead into something closer to contemporary still life, abstraction, and ritual diagram. Drinks appear sparingly within the sequence — small, ceremonial, almost medicinal — reinforcing ingestion as ritual rather than pleasure. We are often told that we eat with our eyes. EAT ME DRINK ME treats food not as nourishment, but as illusion, performance, and psychological threshold: a tasting menu that cannot be eaten, only read.