Madame de Gateau
Laisse-moi me manger comme un gâteau – Let me eat myself as cake!
MADAME DE GATEAU is a signature VideoPainting I created in my Hollywood Studio in 2021. This organic channeling of the camp feminine is a celebration of self-sovereignty – and self-consumption.
I took some inspiration from The Edible Woman, a Margaret Atwood novel I read in college that left a huge impression on me. It examines how women are traditionally consumed by society, and at one point the central character eats a cake she baked shaped like a woman as a metaphor for her own empowerment.
I see this piece as a spiritual descendent of Ouroboros, my 2020 VideoPainting currently in the Metapurse collection.
On a personal level, the concept makes me giggle a bit: I used to be exploited as an artist in the days before I could develop support through NFTs. And now, no one can exploit me… but me!
And of course, there’s the reference to that icon of royal excess, Marie Antoinette. I don’t seek to condemn or exonerate her, but I do feel the decadence she personifies and the precarity of her status are relevant to our moment.
Largely I’m tickled by the cake-like personal fashions of the 18th century!