Chicken eggs

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Eggshell mosaic
For the development of the whole project, many eggs were used, and each part of these was reworked into a material.
There are aspects of the egg industrial mass production that are worse than those related to the meat industries. For example: what happens to male chicks, not needed for eggs? Actually, anyway, after the laying hens are literally squeezed for one or two years, living in horrible conditions, they are sent to the slaughterhouse. What is then the actual price of these eggs and this meat?

Eggs cartons paper mache
The sculptures are made of egg carton paper mache. The reinterpreted subjects are all taken from cartoons that somehow have chicken as the protagonist. In 1943, during the Second World War, the American government entrusted Walt Disney with a propaganda cartoon. In this animation the fox Foxy Loxy is an allegory of Nazism, which through psychology and propaganda, convinces a decent population of chickens to hide in a cave, where they will be devoured.

Making process

Using eggshells of different colours, Abate created tiles; using egg white as collagen he reproduced advertising images, with the mosaic technique, that refer to chicken meat sold for a very low prices.

Eggs membrane parchment
This peculiar type of parchment was made with the testaceous membrane obtained from different chicken eggs. Small pieces of skin collected and preserved for a long period, then laid and glued together thanks to the collagen contained in the eggs. Weights, like large books, served to keep the shape flat. Writings and drawings were created by Abate, with a pyrograph, in order to keep the material pure and not add other elements. On the parchment, Abate rewrites the entire poem Chicken Town by John Cooper Clarke. The sharp lyrics compares Londoners to chickens, frenetic and unaware. The drawings that are integrated into the writing are reproductions of photographs of London chicken shop signs, which have chickens as their subject.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.