Creator: Louise Chow
Exhibition: Inedible Cakes
Published: February 2020
Format: Performance, Baking
Birthdays, and their associated cakes, simultaneously celebrate birth and possibility but also, perhaps more emphatically for adult women, signal decay. In what ways is this ornate, baked object alike to the roles that women have been forced to occupy? Our relationship to cakes, a food for marking occasions, has much to do with the passage of time, and who is allowed to celebrate/consume that passage.
Louise Chow
Description of the Work
12 participants donning grey party hats are called to a round table where a cake decorated as both a clock, a tombstone (reading “R.I.P.”) and a birthday cake (covered in sprinkles and candles and indicating a birth date) sits in the centre.
After the candles have been blown out, starting from hour 1 on the cake-clock, each participant takes their turn to eat their respective slice of cake. During this time, the other participants respect a moment of silence as the cake slice is devoured. Between each act of consumption, Louise reads a passage written on each just-used plate. This continues til the twelfth (and last) slice is eaten.
Linked Essay
- The Transubstantiation of Betty Crocker: A Draft Essay by Louise Chow
