The Cupcake Escape

Cupcakes are particularly popular in difficult times. In 2015 in Great Britain, the Cupcake Shop attracted a lot of customers with bright colors and lots of glitter.




When participants enter the room for The Cupcake Escape, they are greeted by the smell of strawberries - or rather that artificial, sweet and sticky smell which is meant to represent ‘strawberry’. Laid out around a big table are a cupcake for each person and a little glass bottle.
 After a short introduction, participants are invited to interact with the objects. A conversation directed by the participants follows. It starts with children’s parties and ‘the monster of pink glittery things for little girls’ and leads, via niceness and politeness, cosmetics, pollution of bodies and nature to escapism and its politics.

 

/ Sona Dobovaja, Sarah Drain

/ CARU-Research Conference, Contemporary Arts Research Unit, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford

/ materials: Cupcakes (Tesco), glass bottles, food-glitter, food-colouring, ingredients listed on bottles

/ photo: (c) Sarah Drain