Suzanna Teal

Let Me Eat Cake is a multi-disciplinary project comprising clay sculptures resembling slices of cake alongside a series of studio-based, still-life images showing them tightly clenched in angry fists.

In taking cake beyond its characteristic material form, I’m interested in problematising diet culture by disrupting dominant perceptions related to how cake should act, look and feel. The clay creates a cold, hard, heavy tactile experience, that contrasts with our experience of cake as soft and light; a material that ‘gives’.  The strained fists reveal the difficulty and awkwardness of holding them, evoking the strained relationship many women have with food due to diet culture. The act of interacting with the sculptures alters the meaning. There's a thin facade of something positive and shiny under which is sinister, hard and potentially dangerous. They become weapon-like objects, subverting the soft, spongy characteristics we associate with cake and creating an exaggerated disturbance of accepted norms. The fist connotes anger, frustration, and resistance, which are key themes in this series.

The sculptures parody indulgence and exaggerate the ridiculousness of diet culture. They are inedible; deliberately cold and heavy. By physically resisting the grasp of the viewer's hand, they resist traditional ideas of femininity.  

I used imagery torn from domestic cookbooks to produce a collage of the cake's facade. The use of collage is aligned with many forms of social resistance and protest. The fragments of cookbook imagery represent a reinvention of the female role within the domestic space. Ripping up these books and using the photos to create new versions of the foods opens up possibilities of creating something unique and not allowing pre-defined ideas to limit what can be achieved. 

The linguistic tone of most contemporary cookbooks functions as a form of marketing, revealing how diet culture is often advertised in an overly positive and hyper-gendered way. Most young women are subject to diet culture propaganda through social media. Influencer culture in modern society has a huge impact on the way girls view their bodies, and as social media is everywhere and easily attainable, it increases the number of people viewing this harmful material, normalising unhealthy eating habits and mental health disorders. By using the visual style of advertising, the project critiques and parodies the way media markets diet culture. 

Like cakes, women are seen as soft, docile and easily moulded; this project offers a rebuttal against patriarchal views on what defines a woman. It critiques diet culture propaganda and reflects how, under the surface of something seemingly innocent, lurks a sinister motive. The sculptures seek to provoke the audience to empathise and understand the feelings of anxiety and female rage due to the effects of diet culture. The shiny, colourful facade lures the viewer in, forcing them to interact and discover the cold, unforgiving object, metaphorising the effect that diet culture adverts and influencers have on young women.