The Cake, 2020, Ronit Baranga
Updated: Mar 25, 2021
Photo: Hadar Saifan
What
Clay, acrylic paint, lacquer, modeling paste, bones, hair; hand sculpting, hand painting
Who
Ronit Baranga, b. 1973
Why
Ronit Baranga’s work presents us with a surprising scene that seems to belong to a fantastical world: two naked girls examine a cake with wide-open mouths. Baranga often supplies the objects she creates with human body parts such as a mouth and fingers, thus infusing them with life.
The mouth in this work changes the relationship between humans and their food: the layer cake speaks to the girls, perhaps even threatening to devour them. This composition – at once intriguing and disturbing, attractive and repulsive, horrifying and absurd – highlights the tension between a world of urges and a cultivated, rational order.
Where
On display at the Rothschild Gallery, Tel Aviv Biennale of Crafts & Design, MUZA – Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.
