finalmeals | installation with 19 backlightboxes | audiostation| Kunsthalle Mannheim 2001 ©Kathrin Schwab
final meal stands for the last dinner ordered by a person senteced to death. Each final meal, recreated for the installation, comes with an additional file providing specific offender information, including a description of the inmate as a person, with details about his origin, age, education, as well as the crime, he/ she was convicted and sentenced. Two photographic portaits are added on the file. The document is mostly hand signed with the date of execution. The material originates from the deathrow jail in Huntsville, Texas.
I recreated 19 meals, garnished and arranged them. The meals were photographed and presented as slides in backlightboxes, manufactered steelcases of 40cm x40cm x18cm each with a pane on one side to pull, displaying the execution protocol. In addition final statements are played at two audiostations; final statement means the last words the delinquents speak before getting the lethal injection. I recorded the original words with four american voices.
©ralf grömminger