Katia Goetsch

"The True Cost of a Cup of Coffee"
Sculpture/installation
 
In this artwork I wanted to show the exploitation through multinational companies like Nestle of the coffee pickers and the not knowing of many consumers of this.
The hand symbolizes the coffee picker. The material in my work plays an important role. I chose to make this hand out of wax because I wanted to show that the whole effort, blood and life goes into the coffee and the dripping wax shows this very good.
Companies like Nestle just pay 2$ a day to a whole family picking coffee beans the whole day. Through that the pickers live in extreme poverty without access to clean water and no social or health support. The parents can't offer their children a better life, so that it is a horrible circle of exploitation, injustice and poverty.
In the end the white coffee mug represents the consumer and the not knowing of many people of the origin of what they drink everyday. Nestle 'washes the blood out' of the coffee beans, makes it invisible for us to see the horrible circumstances in which the pickers live and presents to us the finished ‘white’ product. Through buying products from companies like Nestle consumer support not knowing this exploitation.
 
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