PhD Candidate in Design×Food Scholarship from Concordia University in Montréal, Alexandra (Ali) Kenefick questions the politics and complicated human/non-human relationships behind meat consumption through research, creation, and collaborative works with other human and non-human actors. Cheeky, scrappy, confronting… her work positions people in a personal space with the uncomfortable questions embedded in what it is to kill, eat, and exist alongside animals in a heavily-urbanized world. By drawing focus to the messy, wicked, and fleshy thing it is to consume— or not consume animals, her work provokes consideration into how entanglements of multispecies eaters can disrupt unsustainable consumption/production patterns by co-creating mindful presents for minded futures.

Influenced by a life lived between big cities, rural towns, and open wilds, Ali’s praxis-based approach positions her personally in the many intersections where humans, nature, and other animals meet, eat, live, and die with each other. Monochromatic and stark, yet mischievous and full of character, her work draws on the use of wordplay and tropes in popular culture to shake down academic research into accessible and respond-able forms, and recognizes actors of all backgrounds and orientations as equal contributors to discourse. Though concerned with the grim questions surrounding the consumption and reconstitution of living things, this use of playfulness and brightness in her work gives viewers space to see the opportunity for life and light amidst dark and uncertain times.