Land of Milk and Honey

2023

Milk and honey continuously circulate through the two pipes embedded within the exhibition. Inspired by Joseph Beuys’, “Honey flows in all directions,” the installation reflects on the enduring metaphor of a “land of milk and honey” — a promised place of abundance, prosperity, and fulfillment. While the work physically manifests this vision through the constant movement of these substances, it simultaneously questions who such promises are truly for, and whether they are ever fully realized for those living within the systems that proclaim them.

The flowing pipes evoke bodily veins, industrial infrastructures, and economic distribution systems, suggesting that entire societies are sustained through invisible circulatory networks of labor, resources, and desire. Yet the work also introduces uncertainty: what if the substances moving through these channels are diluted, synthetic, or adulterated? Does the symbolic promise remain intact as long as the appearance of abundance is maintained and the social contract is seemingly fulfilled?

By positioning milk and honey as both material and metaphor, the installation complicates simplistic narratives of prosperity and progress. It asks viewers to consider how ideals of opportunity, nationhood, and belonging are constructed, distributed, and consumed, while reflecting on the tensions between promise and lived reality, nourishment and exploitation, authenticity and simulation.

Media/Material: Honey, sugar, oil, pumps, rubber hose 
Dimensions: Variable
Exhibited at the 16th Cuenca Biennale