Target

⌀80cm

Known as the “black diamond of the forest,” truffles reveal a complex relationship between labor, protection, control, and ownership within the truffle-hunting industries of Italy and France. Highly trained hunting dogs are essential to locating them, yet they can also become victims of poisoned bait placed by competitors.

Target stages the muzzle as both protection and restraint: it guards the dog from poison while denying it access to the very truffle it has found. Encircling the rim of the bowl, the muzzle becomes an emblem of a labor structure in which the worker cannot possess the product of its own labor — while hunting-dog silhouettes, arranged in a zoetrope, visualize labor as endless repetition without ownership.

At the center, the meat serves as both visual focus and bait. Drawn first to the appetizing image, the viewer is gradually led toward the labor and violence it conceals — until the viewer’s own gaze becomes another target. The work asks how the pleasures of gastronomy are built upon the labor, sacrifice, and systems of control imposed on others.