Performance at Dundas Square
March 2011

This installation is a continuation of a two-dimensional body of work which used corn silk to create small "drawings" of corn maze forms.

(Pop)corn Maze is an installation in a public space that uses the idea of a corn maze as a metaphor for the corporate mediation of our collective experiences with food. The objective was to make make a physical manifestation of the dichotomy of food experience as natural, nourishing, visceral and personal while also highly constructed. The piece also considers how in an urban environment, our experiences of food involve us purchasing it as opposed to growing it. How might one reconcile this distance from food's original source-- the farm, the earth-- through a performative gesture? The site-- Toronto's Dundas Square was chosen due to it's proximity to so many billboards, signs, and for the square's general sense of insane media barrage.

Genetically modified food was also a strong consideration for this project as a way that our food experiences are mediated by corporate interests, as 84% of Canadian corn and 85% of American corn is genetically modified.