 Curated Musical Performance In 2006, artist Rigo Maldonado and I curated a two person exhibit at Voz Alta Performance Space in San Diego. Rigo had recently taken photos of sploshing. Sploshing is a sexual fetish where the participants smash food on their genitals, or collapse naked into food to reach sexual heights. In the case of Rigo’s photos it was dessert sploshing, so we agreed to exhibit art that related to dessert fetishes and called it “Aunt Rita Wants Pie.”
Nowhere are food fights and the use of food as an aphrodisiac normal, but in the western world. Having the ability to waste food is a decadent luxury of elitism. We explored the sensuality of desserts. In one of my metal ‘retablos” a woman is tortured and burning in a fire created by donut-desire, she says: I cannot resist. Another woman holds a seductive wedge of pie between her legs. I also created watercolors of paleta portraits hung in gold Baroque frames.
At the opening Rigo performed a PG version (speedo and goggles) of sposhing in a kids’s blow-up pool, that we called “Human Parfait.” The storefront space lent itself to this live performance in the display windows. My UCSD college roommate Norma Quinones played the mature-lady, soft spoken street docent, explaining the art and performances to many who were afraid to enter the gallery. They loved it and appeared titillated. Desserts were served in excess by S&M dressed waiters/waitresses that urged guests to eat more and more. In the middle of the room was a nude muscular man chained in supine position to our refreshment table. Cookies, nuts, fruit and candy surrounded him. To eat, one would have to dip into the chocolate fondue bowl resting between his legs.
I organized a raw music punk group to support our dessert fetish theme and called them The HareKrishPies. They industrially composed original music and lyrics for songs about the angst and preoccupation of weight and the love of food. One song, It’s Cheaper to be Fat, was a declaration of acceptance of the delicious American regime of a fat-filled, fast-food diet. Another song about the 99¢ Store, praised their inexpensive offerings of cookies, candies and cakes.
The two films I created for this exhibit, “Donut Box” and “Crema” were on rotation in an adult bar area of the gallery. Crema is a close-up of a woman licking an ice cream cone on a very hot evening, while it is melting down her face and hands. The Donut Box was somewhat shot in a direct cinema style. My chef-friend who prides himself in preparing dishes that are seductively delicious, has his way with a box of donuts. When editing the Donut Box, I would laugh and then I would feel torn about having created my first pornographic film. I wondered if I should exhibit it. During the reception many of the male guests took credit for being the actor in the Donut Box. |