Charlotte Kruk, Let Me Bake Cake, 2011
Found packaging, machine stitched, screenprinted
#MondayArtworkSpotlight: Charlotte Kruk’s (@charlotte.kruk) “Let Me Bake Cake,” currently on display in the exhibition Inside Out: Seeing Through Clothing. Using leftover food wrappers as her primary materials, Kruk crafts a stunning, Marie Antoinette-inspired gown that features the packaging of every element needed to bake a cake. However, unlike the waste that characterized Antoinette’s decadent rule, Kruk upcycles discarded and salvaged materials to create her fashionable forms.
According to the artist, these wearable sculptures are designed to “slyly wink” at a culture that often compares women, particularly well-dressed women, to decorations, consumables, and “eye candy.” Initiating dialogue on packaging, brand association, and power structure, Kruk’s work also comments on the gluttony and wastefulness of a disposable, packaged society.
