The Deceptive Reality of Salmon, from the Table to Art

“Salmon colour” is what we usually say to describe a shade of pink tending towards orange. But the salmon that we bring to our tables today would be as grey as herring if not for Canthaxanthin, an artificial colouring added to the diet of bred salmon. In nature, in fact, it’s the crustaceans and mollusks upon which they feed that give salmon their characteristic colour. The artistic duo Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe) have decided to explore this topic in-depth in a project that looks at the environmental impact of fish farming. In the installation created for the Tate Britain, sounds, lights and sculptures explore the “deceptive reality of salmon”, overturning the most rooted convictions. We discover, for example, how breeders choose among a range of 15 tones of pink, that which they deem most satisfying to the eyes of consumers. Salmon, note the artists, is just an example of the chromatic oddities that industrialisation and environmental decay have introduced in nature - the mutant colours of meats, feathers, scales and leaves can be interpreted as clues to important transformations occurring both around us and inside us.