A small gallery in the suburbs of Winnipeg has gathered artists, both local and from around the world, to bring awareness to the issue that every human being has the right to food.

Just Food: The Right to Food from a Faith Perspective was initiated by the Mennonite Committee on Human Rights and focuses on the issue that food distribution around the world is often unbalanced. Held at the Mennonite Heritage Centre (MHC) Gallery, the exhibit brings together commissioned artwork from places such as Iraq, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

Ray Dirks, curator of the MHC Gallery, decided to look to other parts of the world for artists’ perspectives because food security is a global concern: someone who has struggled for food would have a different interpretation than someone in the Western world.

“ Each artist was given a passage on the subject of food and allowed to interpret it in his or her own way. Some were religious texts while others were quotations from famous people or spiritual sayings.

“Living hand to mouth and scrambling to stay alive ... (he was) not just theorizing about food issues, he’s somebody who was hungry,” Dirks said of Jossias Sitoe, one of the artists from Mozambique.

Each artist was given a passage on the subject of food and allowed to interpret it in his or her own way. Some were religious texts while others were quotations from famous people or spiritual sayings.

Bob Haverluck, a political cartoonist and former artist-in-residence in the University of Winnipeg’s theology faculty, was given the UN Charter on Food to work with.

Haverluck believes that all people would create their own food if they were given protected land to work with; the problem lies in the “grossly unjust distribution.”

“I used the tree of life at the centre of the drawing, which is found in many traditions,” Haverluck explained. “The tree of life became the thing I looked at, showing the capacity of people to make food ... drawing on the resources of nature respectfully in order to create sustenance.”

Just Food runs from Saturday, Nov. 20 to Saturday, Jan. 15 at the MHC Gallery, 600 Shaftesbury Blvd. Visit www.mennonitechurch.ca/programs/gallery.

Published in Volume 65, Number 12 of The Uniter (November 18, 2010)