Mana
Mana was made to represent the many and conflicting feelings and ideas surrounding ‘cultured’ or ‘lab-grown’ meat. Mana toured Barnstaple as part of a public engagement project with researchers (law, biochemistry and sociology) from the University of Birmingham, University College London, the University of Basel and the University of Cambridge, and the project was funded by The Royal Society.
- Mana (food), archaic name for manna, an edible substance mentioned in the Bible and Quran
- Mana (Oceanian cultures), the spiritual life force energy or healing power that permeates the universe in Melanesian and Polynesian mythology
- Mana (Mandaeism), a term roughly equivalent to the philosophical concept of ‘nous’
- Māna, a Buddhist term for ‘pride’, ‘arrogance’, or ‘conceit
- Mana (Finnish mythology), or Tuonela, the realm of the dead or the underworld
Mana was created or transformed from man-made materials. The coat is a butcher’s coat or lab coat, worn by a scientist. One arm has been replaced by a matrix of wire, and on it grow flowers, symbol of nature, but all of them fake.
Mana‘s head is half head, half skull, of some beast like a cow or a goat, a deity with horns reminiscent of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess or a Hindu sacred cow – something considered immune to question or criticism. It is made from paper and flour, painted with casein paint – pigment bound by a milk protein, and one of the oldest forms of paint known on earth.
Meat muscle cells adorn Mana‘s coat, and flesh-like fabric bursts from the coat’s arm. Around Mana‘s neck are juicy-looking sausages, entirely made from fabric, as fake as the caul-like skirt that drapes and flows around Mana‘s legs.
