Last Supper Food Artist 2009 – Sweet Tooth of the Tiger

Food Artist: Tracy Candido, Sweet Tooth of the Tiger

Title: Tin Can Cake Workshop

Ingredients: Flour, Sugar, Oil, Spices, Soy Milk, Fruit

Dimensions: Varied

Interpretation:  The Tin Can Cake Workshop uses equipment usually associated with  survival (tin cans as bakeware and the grill in place of an oven) to make a dessert that is technically non-essential food.  We not only restructure the organization of domestic space and tools, but we also expose utopian narrative so often associated with community or participatory art.  By cooking sugary cake in the tin cans and not something more substantial or biologically necessary, we are creating an imaginary space considered to be harmonious and pleasurable; we are making participants happy through their sugar high instead of allowing them to focus on real, concrete aspects of survival.

Bio:  Sweet Tooth of the Tiger is part entrepreneurial/d.i.y. food service project and part participatory art project that uses sugar as a medium and explores eating as social practice.  The project takes the form of a bake sale that utilizes the community and public sphere as a place for eating, feeding, and talking with your mouth full.  Sweet Tooth is invited by members of its community to set up a bake sale table at awesome events and engage with participants by exchanging baked goods for some money.  Hopefully, participants are activated by their sugar high to engage in conversation with other participants, heightening their awareness of their own social position as well as a broadened perspective concerning their environment.

Native New Yorker Tracy Candido began Sweet Tooth of the Tiger as a way to talk with people about dessert; she had an insatiable curiosity about their food memories, family baking history, and favorite flavors of sweets.  Sweet Tooth also allows Tracy to explore the theories behind food as a medium in art and culture, participatory and interactive art practice, the transaction between maker and consumer, and the idea of the reorganization of the hierarchy in domestic spaces.  Tracy holds a Master’s Degree from New York University in Visual Culture Theory.