The Poverty Line (Eggs) (United States of America)
Stefen Chow
Singaporean, born 1980
Huiyi Lin
Singaporean, born 1980
2010-2020
A large inkjet photograph that presents a clear plastic tray of brown eggs laid out on a newspaper, using everyday groceries as a tangible way to represent and question what counts as the “poverty line.”
What strikes you first is the clinical regularity—the warm, speckled eggs in a neat grid and the shiny plastic tray—set against the flat gray of newspaper columns and images so that a mundane domestic object reads like a counted unit against the printed world of headlines and ads.
By turning abstract income statistics into a visible inventory of household goods, the piece joins practices of design and social research that make economic data palpable and provoke questions about how societies measure and value basic needs.
Medium
Inkjet print
Dimensions
each: 15 9/16 × 22 13/16" (39.5 × 58 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the Fund for the Twenty-first Century and Committee on Architecture and Design Funds
Accession
94.2023.24
Palette
Exhibitions
