BELLA CARDIM

I Won’t Tell is an interactive installation that invites viewers to reflect on their relationship with food and on the moments when eating becomes a secret act. At the center of the work, a white box mounted on the wall contains a peephole. When visitors look inside, they encounter the question: What do you eat when no one is watching?

 

Next to it, a stack of sticky notes invites the public to write their answers and place them on the wall. This simple gesture transforms the installation into a collective record of private experiences. As the notes accumulate, quietly shared secrets reveal recurring desires, fears, and forms of concealment surrounding the act of eating.

 

Eating in secret can carry guilt and shame, but these emotions are not formed in isolation. They are shaped by social rules about what, how, and when we should eat, and by the moralization of both the body and its appetites. I Won’t Tell brings this concealed dimension of eating into public view without exposing the identities of those who participate.

 

By gathering anonymous responses, the work turns individual secrecy into a shared structure. What we eat when no one is watching may reveal what we were taught to hide.