A Bite of Cheap Nature
ว่าด้วยรสชาติของพื้นที่ แรงงาน และการเปลี่ยนแปลงภูมิทัศน์ใต้ทุน
(On the Flavors of Place, Labor, and Landscape Transformations under Capital)
This snack installation is part of the exhibition Ecology: Relational: Reflected by Pietro Lo Casto, Coconut plantation, Ratchaburi, Thailand (2025)
dried mangoes, dried bananas, coconuts, sugarcane juice, sweet basil, kaffir lime leaves, chilli powder, stringless bee honey, pen on plastic wrap, 120 x 150 cm.
Alongside Ecology: Relational Reflected exhibition in the coconut plantation, this seasonal dried mango snack offers a sensory entry point into the surrounding landscape and its ecosystem. Inspired by P’Yai, a long-time resident of the coconut plantation whom I came across while exploring the area, I learned that when market prices made selling mangoes unsustainable, she turned to a traditional method, drying the fruit as a way to preserve both the harvest and local knowledge. To preserve unsellable R2 mangoes, I reimagined this practice as a form of ecological storytelling.
Spanning over 140 rai, the plantation is not only devoted to coconuts but intercropped with various fruits and plants, reflecting how small households and family-run producers combine different crops to sustain their livelihoods amid shifting market demands. This work began with a simple question: What hidden resources and quiet forms of resilience are embedded in this landscape?
Throughout this process, I exchanged and gathered resources that are often discarded or devalued: ripe mangoes that could not be sold, sweet basil leaves trimmed away to create a uniform market sample, and other ingredients shaped by the plantation’s ecology and by conversations with residents. These materials were transformed through small acts of preservation, fermentation, and drying, culminating in an edible map that connects different areas of the plantation through taste.
In this work, flavour becomes a medium for mapping lived experience, labour histories, and seasonal cycles of abundance and precarity. This gesture invites audiences to engage with the landscape through an unpredictable flavour palette while discovering stories of resilience, adaptation, and interconnection embedded in the dialogue between artist, grower, and environment.
(Reference:The title draws on Jason W. Moore’s concept of “Cheap Nature”, which critiques how capitalism systematically devalues nature and labor to fuel endless accumulation.)
Dialogue with residents in the coconut plantation
“There are so many coconut plantations around here, dear.
But the biggest one is his. Mine? just a few dozen rai.
After my husband passed, I couldn’t tend the land on my own.
I harvest what I can.
No money to hire help, only my sister lends a hand.
You ask about stingless bees? Not here.
You’d need hundreds of rai for that.
But to think about, when the price is right,
one coconut can sell for seventeen baht.”
That conversation happened by chance, I had stopped at a roadside food stall, surrounded by coconut trees in every direction. I knew then I had entered Wang Yen district, Ratchaburi.
After lunch, I made my way back to Supot’s farm. The path was rough. It led me through shaded trails, across the Sakae canal, floating thick with water hyacinths. On either side: endless palms, divided by narrow ditches, their shade softening the heat on my face.
I paused at a small pavilion by the water, where an old man sat among mountains of sweet basil leaves. He stared into the distance, but his hands moved with quiet skill. I watched a while, then walked over.
“Hello, Grandpa.”
No answer. I tried again. Silence. Until a woman came by and explained— his hearing and sight were nearly gone. I leaned closer and raised my voice. Only then did he realize I was there.
“My eyes... not what they used to be. Been at it since morning. Just doing what I can. I try to take off the bad leaves underneath. But now, I can’t tell if I’m picking good ones by mistake.
The old flowers basil, I leave them.
Later today, I’ll bring it all to Sri Muang Market.”
“No one comes to pick it up like the coconuts?”
“No, no. I grow it. Pick it. Drive it to sell, all by myself.”
I left him gently and turned to the woman, curious if coconut plantations here grow more than coconuts.
“I’ve got my own grove,” she said,
“but it’s not enough to live on. So I plant fruit too;
guava, mango, banana, basil, roselle. All in the back.”
I looked where she pointed, and caught sight of
sunlit rounds; bright mango sheets drying.
“Want to try?” she smiled.
She peeled one from a stair step and handed it to me.
“Oh spicy!” I said.
“My recipe,” she laughed.
“Spicy to cut the richness—no sugar at all.”
“This season of year,” she added,
“everyone around here’s drying mango.”
She showed me a basket filled with plump,
round mangoes I didn’t recognize, R2s.
“When they ripen, they ripen all at once.
Too many to sell. Especially R2—three baht a kilo.
Cheap as air.
So I turn them into this instead.”
She packed a box of mango sheets,
added a bunch of ripe bananas,
and handed them to me
“Here, take some for your friends at the farm.”
baannoorg AIR program OPEN STUDIO
Exhibition : Ecology: Relational: Reflected
Artist: Pietro Lo Casto
Curator: Patcharayada Sa Nguannam
Artist Assistant: Paphon Tantiprapas
Locally sourced snacks in collaboration with Parichat Tanapiwattanakul
Special Thanks:
Na'Yai, P'Kai and P'Saw, Khun Supoj, Grandpa(dad of Na'Yai),
Baan Noorg: Jiandyin, Baan Noorg interns: Pink, Ya, Mew, Pin and lastly Khun Pietro Lo Castro!
other sources: