Sword or Dessert explores the artist’s long-held, obsessive desire to become an instrument of art, and the distortions embedded within that desire, through drawing, sculpture, collage, wearable soft sculpture and film. The work begins with a deeply internalised belief that devotion and suffering are necessary conditions for artistic achievement, and critically dismantles a perspective that imagined the ‘sword’ as an ideal form of art capable of piercing through the human body.
Taking the film Amadeus as a key reference in the formation of this artistic outlook, the project connects the exaggerated ornamentation of eighteenth-century femininity with Salieri’s desire for desserts. Through this connection, the female body is positioned not as the ‘sword’ that acts as an artistic subject, but as the ‘dessert’ that is viewed and consumed.
A cake-like pouf, obsessively collected objects turned into private relics, distorted images of swords, figures of martyred saints, and a wearable soft sculpture shaped by excessive ornamentation bring together sacredness and desire, violence and beauty. The female body within the work seeks to become the sword of art, yet is ultimately reduced to a decorative object whose movement is restricted. Through grotesque excess and distortion, the project makes this contradiction visible, critically depicting blind devotion to art and the structures of objectification surrounding the female body.