“Last Call”, an ongoing project, is a collection of special meal requests by individuals executed in the United States since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976. Written on restaurant receipts and arranged into neat rows, it mimics the mechanical routine of taking orders and posting them at a restaurant kitchen, awaiting to be completed.

Each list can be seen as a final portrait of the condemned. In his final exercise of freedom, did he choose something that reminds him of home and childhood? Or are we looking at a grown man incarcerated, and the food that has given him satisfaction of late? Perhaps this is a portrait of the condemned trying to forget his fate? There are also those who declined a special meal: possibly a protest, showing one’s unwillingness to participate in the state’s death process; a total acceptance of one’s doom as inescapable; or its opposite: a denial.

As a collection, “Last Call” also serves as a commentary on the practice of the final meal itself. The piece questions the motive of offering the meal. Conceivably, it is a reflection of a society obsessed with consumption: food equated with pleasure; and the liberty to choose what to eat an even bigger luxury in prison.  One may see it as a final compassionate act of charity; for others, an act of atonement by a society faced by the moral issues surrounding the death penalty. Or a conflict between the two: much like the search for a humane method of execution. Still others question the need to offer convicted murderers freedom and pleasure they did not afford their victims.

Finally, “Last Call” appeals to the voyeuristic curiosity of the audience. Reading each list becomes reading into the condemned’s final state of mind. Until, inevitably, it is a mirror turned towards them: the audience asking themselves, “What will I have?”