Still Life with Pomegranates

by Alexandra Ages

It started with the pomegranates.

I’ve never actually seen rubies, but in my mind, they resemble pomegranate seeds; glistening crimson, full of promise. Sublime.

Slowly, they seemed to take over my phone. Pomegranate was everything, was everywhere.

Cut open pomegranates on finely manicured tables, lit up by golden candles. A few scattered seeds, used thoughtfully within verdant salads. Enamel pomegranate earrings. Pomegranate paintings, re-imagined conceptions of the Dutch masters.

I was living in a shabby Montreal hotel room, with frequent fumigations for bed bugs. The carpet smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. The shower had suspicious stains. And it was there that I had one singular beautiful pomegranate, picked up from the local food security program for ‘ugly’ produce. The pomegranate, however, was not ugly, at all. It seemed like a little miracle slipped into a bag of bruised bananas.

I searched for the best way to cut it. How to be most efficient, effective, with my treasure. How to devour it in the most fulsome of manners.

And then the pomegranates flooded my feeds. The real, physical pomegranate that I’d brought back to my room was eaten quickly.
Greedily. To be ravenous is to approach the act of eating with speed, no matter how badly you wish to savour.

The digital pomegranates however, were eternal. Their essence, lacking physicality, would never be timebound.

Soon, I started noticing other fruits. Lavish spreads on white tablecloths with honey-dripped figs. Influencers posing with berries in tribute to ‘strawberry girl’ makeup. Grapes upon grapes upon grapes, spilling over their baskets with such abundance.

None of it was eaten, of course. Online, food existed not as sustenance, but as symbolism. There is an inherent affluence for those who can use food purely as decor, a status signifier that comes with food as props for Instagram, not as a form of nourishment. Thin, wealthy, and beautiful bodies can pose next to teeming plates of honeyed charcuterie boards, enjoying the aesthetic experience of food, minus any actual consumption. Sensory, yet lacking the sense of taste.

In times of scarcity, of hunger, there is deep power held by those with such an excess of food that it cannot even be consumed.

As snow built up outside, as my stomach filled with cheap noodles, as the food bank lines overflowed, my own digital landscape became increasingly food-centered. Tables were no longer places for eating, but tablescapes, with dried orange slices placed gingerly as decor, tucked amid eucalyptus leaves, nestled beside home made breads and candles made of butter. Flame lit, I imagined the scent of warm butter in the air, feeling hunger. But I understood that in these scenes, hunger wasn’t even an afterthought; the candles could burn all night. I wanted to be in rooms where nobody was hungry.

Some days, flicking through image after image of lavish food-as-decor scenes, I imagined the food rotting.

Untouched meats and cheeses, coated in a thin layer of fine blue white mold.

Honey turning to crystals, edible but unpleasant.

Nobody hungry, nobody eating, piles of food gripped in decomposition. Pomegranate seeds wasting away.

The real fruit was long gone. Only the idea of it remained, glowing perpetually on my screen.
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Alexandra Ages is a policy specialist and writer currently based in Edmonton, Alberta. Her work explores the intersections of class, gender, and digital culture, and has appeared in Policy Options, Broadbent Perspectives, and The Tyee. She is particularly interested in how systems of power shape everyday acts of care, consumption, and survival.
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Artist Statement: This short-form piece of creative nonfiction explores the intersection of food and social class, looking specifically at the contrast between food as an aspirational status symbol, versus food as a physical source of nourishment and sustainment amid rising rates of systemic food insecurity. As an individual who has lived experience with food insecurity, I wanted to explore this tension via the motif of pomegranates, which were a rarity and a treasure to me in times of hunger, yet seemed incredibly abundant online.

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Featured image: Pomegranate still life photograph by Margarita Zueva, 2019.