Food Mask, 2016
Performance with twine, nails, and fruit
Concordia University, Montréal, QC

Food Mask invited audience members to eat fruit attached to a mask constructed from twine and nails, the nails functioning as oversized toothpicks that extended the fruit from the performer's face. Before the performance began, participants were told they would be fed and that they were free to decline. Although they could have simply removed the fruit by hand, every participant instead chose to lean in and receive it directly from the mask.

This unexpected response became central to the work. The performance explores how consent, trust, and social expectation shape intimate exchanges. By transforming the face into a site of offering, the work positions feeding as an act of care that also requires vulnerability from both the performer and the participant. Rather than documenting a predetermined interaction, the performance reveals how simple gestures can produce moments of embodied connection, where intimacy emerges through voluntary participation and the shared negotiation of proximity.