Rebecca Waring-Crane
Creative In Residence
Zapara School of Business

Using disposable cardboard food containers, now imbued with artistic and symbolic meaning, Article 24 highlights food insecurity—the lack of regular access to nutrition—within a specific community at a particular point in time. Each of the 16,553 falling spoons represents one child who qualified for free lunch in public elementary school in the city of Riverside, California, during 2022-2023.

Working with hundreds of volunteers to make, thread, and hang the spoons, Waring-Crane creates community art that confronts social issues. The work takes its title from The Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights treaty adopted by consensus by the United Nations General Assembly in November 1989. Article 24 states that:

Children have the right to the best health care possible, clean water to drink, healthy food and a clean and safe environment to live in. All adults and children should have information about how to stay safe and healthy. California produces more than enough vegetables, fruits, and nuts to feed its population and supply out-of-state markets, yet children go hungry. Ironically, the very farm workers who raise and harvest crops are unable to afford the literal fruits of their labors.

This installation involved intimate contact with each spoon that represents one child whose hunger, and attendant anxiety, is shaped by systems—such as economic inequality, discriminatory practices, limited access, lack of social safety nets, biased labor markets, and barriers related to race, gender, and geography—over which they have no agency. Article 24 challenges viewers to recognize the silent crisis of food insecurity. If a hungry child was right in front of you, would you turn away? The work invites reflection on the choices we make and the systems we accept, urging us to see, question, and respond in ways that create real, sustainable change.