MARICRUZ CRUZ SHOW

MAY 2018

At the start I was inspired by my favourite book, like water for chocolate to make certain dishes that I have memories attached to and share them with people at the private view. I always had in mind that I wanted to make a video to go with the piece as I had gotten really into video art and artist such as Rachel Maclean around that time.

When I started planning the video, I realized that I was a lot more interested in making the video than making the food. The video was supposed to be a fictional cooking tutorial inspired by cooking tutorials from the 1950s. Slowly I started to develop the character of Maricruz Cruz, the host of the cooking show. I went around Ikea’s kitchens dressed as Maricruz to develop her personality and to practice for the video. In a separate photography project, I continued to develop her character by exploring her life as a celebrity in the 50s and 60s.

Even though the video was meant to be set in the 50s I did not want my video to be in black and white, I wanted to make it exactly how I imagined it my mind which was a lot like a cartoon. The video is set in 50s in my own artistic universe. Humour also became a big part of my video from using fake food, having a cut out of James Steward as my husband, it all became more of a parody of the typical 1950s cooking show.

After this project I have used video and humour in all of my other projects a big part of my art practice.