MCA Exhibit Lets You Eat Cake

By Melissa Wiley in Food on Aug 23, 2013 3:30PM

Catharsis is fun, especially when you get to lick the frosting. This Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art, local artist Edra Soto will continue healing her niggling nuptial wounds in the best way we know how: by serving up wedding cake. Commemorating her 11th wedding anniversary, Soto will slice and serve 11 pineapple upside down cakes as part of Alberto Aguilar’s interactive installation “Home Field Play.” Perhaps if the love birds had just stuck with plain ole vanilla, Soto would have transcended the (granted, mysterious) trauma by now. But no pain, no gain, as they say, and we’re happy to help her deal.

Aguilar’s installation, part of the Homebodies exhibit, meanwhile, playfully re-imagines an archetypal domestic landscape. Repurposed furniture transforms a dining room table into a mirrored ping-pong table, a swath of carpeting into a musical game built on bells and balloons. You’re encouraged to make yourself at home among the art—to tuck yourself into the bed and take a two-minute nap or pause in the kitchen and wipe your face free of cake crumbs.

The cake is free with admission to the museum.

The MCA is located at 220 E. Chicago.