A single grain of rice is representative of you; another is of me. Of All the People in All the World’s main concept–equating each person with a grain of rice–is startlingly fresh and deceptively simplistic. It allows the viewing public to understand the abstract concept of scale in more concrete terms. The exhibition runs from February 20th to March 3rd in Zilkha Gallery, with smaller installations all throughout the Middletown area on Main Street, Exley Science Center and Olin Library.

Wesleyan commissioned the exhibition from Stan’s Café, a theater group from Birmingham, England, as part of the Feet to the Fire campaign, which explores global climate change through different lenses from science to art. Stan’s Café was formed by Graeme Rose and James Yarkev in 1991 and has done an array of theater and film works, including It’s Your Film, Canute the King and The Black Maze. Their current exhibition was conceived when Yarkev, the director of Stan’s Café, began to think about scale and the relationship between a person’s significance and insignificance in the world.

“I could not grasp the abstract idea of a million people, so I tried to think about making that idea tangible,” he said. “I thought, if I got a million things and placed them in the corner of the room, would I really be able to tangibly grasp the significance of such an abstract number? I knew that the things would have to be items that were small, consistent in size, cheap, easily attainable everywhere and transportable. Luckily, I had lived in a neighborhood in England that had a wealth of South Asian stores.”

The work has been performed in cities throughout the world, from Los Angeles to Melbourne and Madrid to New York City. With a grain of rice representing a single person, Yarkev was able to make statistics tangible and accessible to the average person. In addition to climate change, the statistics try to address such varied subjects as politics, gender and history. Sample statistics include a comparison of the number of coalition troops and the number of civilians killed in Iraq since 2003; the number of people versus the number of women in the Senate; or the number of people displaced in Darfur. While the show is misleadingly straightforward in its presentation, it engages people of all ages and backgrounds in an effort to allow them to reflect on the significance or insignificance of their place in the world.

“The show is about you, us and the world that we share,” Yarkev said.

The show’s presentation is a truly stunning sculptural experience. The grains of rice are presented on plain sheets of paper, blemished only by the statistic; designated pathways through the rice allow audience members to absorb both the numerical and visual information of the exhibition. The comparison of the number of people born today in the world and those who will die today, for example, is so stark and jarring that the experience makes the viewer understand the gravity of the situation in a scaled, comprehensible manner. The viewer’s experience is heightened by the fact that the premise of the show is partially interactive: as each person enters the exhibition, they are given a grain of rice to signify themselves and their relationship to the world and the exhibition.

“I like the individual ones because it reminds me that there are individuals in the world, it gives me a true sense of perspective,” said Margaret Aldredge ’11.

Professor Barry Chernoff and Pam Tatge, who sit on the board for the “Feet to the Fire” campaign, were looking for some way to communicate the scale of global warming and climate change. Then, about a year ago, Anne Carlson—a member of the theater company–informed them that it just so happened that the exhibition was in New York City. The rest is history.

Following the theme of the campaign, the exhibition displays statistics that are largely environmental. Students in Chernoff’s Earth and Environmental Studies 197 classes in the fall of 2008 produced many of the climate change statistics that were used in the show. Shocking and thought provoking results include not only statistics about the world but also those about the greater Middletown area; this was an attempt to foster a sense of community. Statistics include the number of residents of Niger whose carbon footprint could be offset by one US resident unplugging his or her computer over night, and the number of people in Connecticut whose commute to work takes 60 minutes or more.

To continue with the idea of fostering community, the show will also donate the 11,100 pounds of rice used in the exhibition to represent the world’s population to various charities and foundations, such as St. Vincent DePaul Place/Amazing Grace Food Pantry, Shoreline Soup Kitchen and Pantry, the American Red Cross and Food Not Bombs.

What is so chilling about the whole project, however, is the way in which it both shrinks and expands a single person to a grain of rice. That is the genius of this exhibition.