Still from Cake Piece. 2019. Erin Single.
Performance documentation here: https://vimeo.com/502755600/6348dfc5ee
Cake Piece, its name inspired by Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) and the quote “Let them eat cake” (originally in French, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”) was a performance I did to critique Georgia House Bill 481. This bill, passed in 2019 by the state of Georgia’s General Assembly, was an anti-abortion law that outlawed most abortions once a doctor could detect fetal cardiac activity, or about six weeks into a pregnancy. The artwork challenges a law that “violated a woman’s constitutional right to access to the procedure as established by the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade” and more broadly the elitism of state governments in the southern United States which passed similar legislation at this time.
The law was struck down by a federal judge in July 2020. (“Federal judge throws out Georgia’s anti-abortion law.”Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 2020.)