Chocolate poems (2024)
Context-specific narrative conceptual artwork & installation of photographs and colonial artefacts

In 1906 Harper magazine published an exposé by Henry Woodd Nevinson of the cocoa industry, detailing the horrific conditions workers faced on two Islands off the West African coast: São Tomé and Príncipé. Cadbury was in the spotlight, as the portuguese plantations were their main source of cocoa. A company priding itself on its charitable contributions and ethical working conditions was sourcing its cocoa from slave labour. In 2019 The Washington post published a similar article detailing the use of child labourers on farms supplying Mars, Nestlé, and Hershey with cocoa. Mondelez, the cocoa producer named in this article currently owns the Swedish company Marabou, which was founded in 1916 and sold in 1993.

In 2024 we, the graduating class of BFA students at the Royal Institute of Art, had our graduation show at Marabouparkens konsthall: The historic leisure park (now kunsthalle) which the factory workers used for recreational activities, until the Marabou factory moved location in the 1960’s. For the exhibition I produced a context-specific conceptual artwork using the following prompt:

”Neil Bhat died in 1916 at 3:31, and his body was buried in the grounds where Marabouparken now stands.”

Within the exhibition original Marabou chocolate boxes from the 20’s and 30’s modified with Marabout stork feathers were placed around corners, behind sculptures, and below paintings. Sightlines were used to produce unexpected encounters with the colonial artefacts. Four photographs titled the mourners were placed in larger boxes, depicting my real family posing as the grieving fictional family of a dream Neil Bhat who lived and worked at the Marabou factory. The prompt above was what allowed for a juxtaposition of my own mortality with the history of Marabou, a deliberate staging of self as passive bystander, consumer, and voyeur of the historic exploitation which is still ongoing.

On the opening night 24/5/24 I was carried by the BFA24 class in an antique cocoa crate, a funeral parade which culminated in a performatic reading of the original poem marabou.

The following four Sundays had performatic readings that changed each day. The 2/6/24 had live musical improvisation by 0155 music and while reading the replacement I cut off my hair with shears. On the 9/6/24 the audience came expecting to see me read the replacement once more, but were met instead by Elmer Blåvarg in my white shirt. During the final week in preparation for the reading of dream of a factory worker I cleaned the exhibition every day barefoot, wearing an overall embroidered with my initials.

The final Sunday I was replaced in each reading by a different performer: Soni Sagan performed marabou, Malin Arnedotter Bengtsson performed the replacement, and my brother Nathan Bhat appeared wearing the overall embroidered with our shared initials to read dream of a factory worker.