Paradoxes of Plenty #44

Belonging to the larger Paradossi dell’Abbondanza (Paradoxes of Plenty) series, the themes of these works Paradoxes of Plenty #39, #43, #44, are the relationships between coffee, sugarcane, and cocoa plantations, and the colonial extractive exploitation that historically enabled their cultivation through slavery. The colorful appearance of these works, reminiscent of children’s illustrations, conceals the paradox of the West’s favored consumption of products derived from these crops and the exploitation, punctuated by economic and social injustice, imposed on workers in the Global South. Coffee is the second most consumed beverage in the world. The caffeine industry is large, extensive and murky. In Paradoxes of Plenty #44 Marzia Migliora tries to tell this critical knot of contemporaneity. If, in the Western world, coffee is a beverage linked to efficiency at work and the pleasure of a break, in the global South the large monocultures are places where a brutal and unfair work system is perpetuated. Thus, the work is structured on three levels, in which the different actors of the large system that the demand for coffee keeps afloat appear. In the drawing and collage, however, consumers and producers meet, their images coexist, reminding the viewer that human and non-human beings are deeply intertwined through bonds of responsibility and interdependence.