Nohelia Vargas Bolivar

I only wanted to eat cake

The installation I only wanted to eat cake combines video, animation, and painting. The videos on display show the artist's hands painting and drawing flowers while she narrates her own experiences and perceptions of being a young adult, naturalized American citizen. This includes undergoing stress of financial instability, being closely acquainted of the misfortunes of people in developing countries and witnessing the social struggle of freshly arrived immigrants as they strive to assimilate to a new culture.

Drawing and painting flowers becomes an ambiguous act by which the artist juxtaposes the easements of living in a developed country with the disadvantages and the stress that also generates from maintaining livelihood under a self feeding socioeconomic system that perpetuates, anxiety and depression, which are in turn regarded as inefficiencies and errors, as opposed to natural human experiences that exist in the realm of normal people.