Last Supper 2009 Food Art – Eve + Bowie & Eliza

Project Candy by Eliza Myrie

Artist  Eve + Bowie; & Eliza Myrie;

Title: Edible Ghetto/ Ghetto Edibles

Ingredients: Gingerbread

Size: Dimensions Variable

This cultural moment has provided us with a new awareness of how we shelter ourselves, in large part because what was assumed for many has been taken away; tent cities, foreclosure and homelessness are more pressing than ever. Additionally it magnifies the experience of those who have been dealing with transient and inadequate housing for much longer than the media frenzied natural disasters we are all so familiar with.  Housing ghettos are representative of people finding a way within their “means”. What does it mean to re-image something regarded in the cultural imagination as sweet and innocent? What about the more sinister side of the “Hansel and Gretel” fable or the implications surrounding shelter/home as sustenance?  The piece “edible ghetto/ghetto edibles”, an edible structure drawing from the architecture of tenements, abandoned factory towns, projects, and row houses, finds the participants/viewers ingesting the concepts and issues surrounding these spaces. At once the imminent destruction is a chance to grow something from nothing and examine the destruction we are ourselves responsible for.

Bio:   Eve + Bowie are artists who live and work in New York City. Through provocative work, conversation and private thought we cause people to question and expand their perceptions with the firm belief that challenging the way people thing can bring about social awareness and change. Eliza Myrie is a New York transplant making a way in Chicago as an MFA candidate at Northwestern University.  Through observation and consideration of urban space my work attempts to strip down and re organize icons and cultural expectations to begin conversations regarding social realities of our contemporary world.