Cuntrol by Sarah Ayala @ SOMA

Eat it and Weep

A visual representation of the likeness and juxtaposition of current American society with the frivolity of Neoclassicism during the Ancien Régime. All in hopes to inspire reflection upon our mass obsession with image and consumption and our lack of true care. Looming weeping willows allude to society’s departure from nature in the most basic sense and our masking of that separation to live in aesthetic ignorance. An elite and lavish tablescape is presented with culinary sculptures of what we are at times forced to consume.

Past as prologue

This cake series began when the stimulus checks were distributed due to the economic fallout from the very real coronavirus pandemic. The words “Let them eat..” are in reference to a quote misattributed to Marie Antoinette (Queen of France during the French Revolution), suggesting her starving subjects simply “eat cake” instead. Although she is unlikely to have actually said this, the tone-deaf attitude resonates with our current social, political, and economic struggles that came to a head in 2020. With a cyclical lens, if the flashy present harks back to the Neoclassical era (1760-1830) associated with this quote, said era, in turn, took its inspiration from Classical Antiquity (800 BCE-600 CE).