el baile del centenario, 2022

gilded chocolate, chocolate cake

matamoros 404, oaxaca

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“El baile del centenario” is a project that studies the way in which notions of style that materialize in architecture also manifest in the celebrations that happen inside it, and how the power dynamics behind food are very similar to those we find in architecture. Revolving around the idea of celebration, the project departs at the banquet for the 100th anniversary of the independence of Mexico in 1921. While this event celebrated the liberation from the European domain and the establishment of a national narrative, it was paradoxically filled with European imagery, romanticizing the idea of “progress” through appropriated neoclassical elements. The project proposes the creation of a series of architectural pieces casted in chocolate and cake, replicating the ornaments found inside the spaces where Independence celebrations occured. These, a life size reference to sugar pastillage and ornamentation used in European pastry making and cake decoration techniques, are displayed on a table resembling a banquet, meant to be

consumed, metabolized, digested and excreted.