I don’t like fruitcake! | 2022 |
Exhibited and performed at This Art Fair, Amsterdam
The work, a performance and installation set in an art fair booth, features a kid-sized table and tea set in white painted paper-maché, and canvas napkins with handwritten poems as a backdrop. The work approaches the fruitcake as a metaphor for sticky situations, tricky institutions, and icky social relationships where one can feel like a stuck raisin. The raisin symbolises discomfort and the expectation to accept these situations, and social codes of conduct, much like eating raisins in a fruitcake even when they are not liked. Subverting that expectation, the performance offers a ritual of liberation. The raisin, dressed in a binbag couture dress on white painted paper-maché cake stand heels, spits out her poetry along with actual raisins, and invites the audience to do the same. Spat out on a cute little plate, viewers can take some distance from their raisins (themselves). Now, what do you see? How does it feel to be a raisin?