BELLA CARDIM

Fiz Pra Você (2024)

“Fiz pra você” explores the intricate relationship between food, love, and familial expectations. This installation consists of wooden cages, each holding family food recipes in different states—some trapped inside, others attempting to escape, and a few suspended by a red thread, caught between preservation and release. The thread serves as both a connection to ancestry and a fragile tether to expectation, evoking the tension between inherited traditions and personal autonomy.

A handwritten ribbon weaves through the installation, inscribed with expressions from my upbringing—phrases that shaped my relationship with food and body image. For the first time in my work, I use my mother language, Portuguese, transcribing these sentences exactly as they were spoken to me. Statements such as “Kids don’t get to have a say,” “God will punish you,” and “Pray that you don’t have a daughter like yourself” expose how deeply food can be intertwined with discipline, guilt, and control. These words, repeatedly heard during childhood, become embedded in the subconscious, dictating behaviors long after they are spoken.

The cages serve as a metaphor for emotional confinement, revealing how food—traditionally a gesture of love—can also impose societal and familial pressures. The use of fabric and handwritten text creates an intimate, tactile experience, while the suspended recipes evoke both fragility and resilience. Some remain enclosed, while others drift beyond the cages, suggesting the possibility of release.

Through Fiz pra você, I invite viewers to reflect on how nourishment can both connect and confine, shaping our identities, relationships, and emotional lives. The piece asks us to consider what we inherit, what we carry forward, and what we choose to leave behind.