Installation Art
Aunt Maude’s Economical Boiled Fruit Cake, 2022,
My piece explores the significance of food to one’s personal identity, and its ability to soothe homesickness by accessing sensory encoded memories. This piece is an ephemeral installation consisting of a dining room set covered in melting candles. The piece can only be fully experienced in person, during the week of the exhibition as it is a scent-based project.
This project was born out of homesickness. It is also an exploration of how food relates to an individual’s identity. I chose to recreate the scent of a dessert found in one of my grandmother’s cooking books: Aunt Maude’s Economical Boiled Christmas Cake. My grandmother was born in Newfoundland while it was still a British colony. Newfoundland, nicknamed by locals “the rock”, has little farmable land. The recipe reflects the culture and environment it came from well. It’s a classic English recipe, modified to last on an island that relies on non-perishable foods. This piece is also a work of design fiction. It was based on research about sensory coded memories and their applications in treating dementia. After watching my grandfather battle with it towards the end of his life, and seeing how much his condition improved when eating his favorite foods from childhood, I asked myself what foods would jog my memory if I ever develop dementia as well. The background soundtrack consists of the favourite music of my grandmother, my mother, and myself during our childhoods and young adult years. This is another emerging field of dementia research that involves bypassing damaged areas of the brain through memories of music.