Existential Snacks: Food for Thought
Familiar ingredients. Uncomfortable truths: American snack foods as instruments of cultural reckoning.
2024 - Present
Part political satire, part spiritual wake-up call, Existential Snacks: Food for Thought is a conceptual art project that uses American candies and snack foods as sculptural materials to address urgent, global, and existential issues ranging from threats to democracy, climate change, racism, and AI. The series blends humor, activism, and spirituality, combining pop-cultural absurdity with moral and spiritual gravity to explore how society trivializes profound human crises.
“Robbi Firestone’s Existential Snacks project is a brilliant contemporary extension of the longstanding tradition of Satirical Artworks. Innovative in her use of materials Firestone’s paintings/sculptures reveal a sense of humor, are clever and reveal a substantial insight into her subject matter which makes this series so successful.
-Louis Grachos, Executive Director, SITE Santa Fe”
We All Scream For Ice (So Scream!): Dessert Before Extinction 36"H x 48"W Medium: Snowcaps Candy, Hostess Snowballs, Arctic Ice Freeze Dried Cotton Candy, IceBreakers, PolarIce Gum
Democracy? CrunchTrump: Cheeto. in Chief 36"W x 48"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
Emergency Broadcast System: After Us 36"H x 48"W Starburst Candy. Rock Candy.
CrunchTrump: Phoneme C D G H K N S T X Y Z 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
CrunchTrump: Phoneme C D G H K N S T X Y Z 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
Crunch Trump: Sign of the Times? 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
CrunchTrump: Phoneme F V 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
CrunchTrump: Phoneme A E I 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.
CrunchTrump: Phoneme CH J SH 24"W x 18"H Crunchy Cheetos, Cheetos Flaming Hot on Clayboard.