After the artist is being covered with black powders, to brown powders, to pink powders to white powders (notice the adding of colors in comparison with the performance white element 11). The food powders also represent how far humans have gone from nature and how we are influenced by food companies and how addicted we are to sugar and refined food products. The last powders are white, being maize flour, coffee creamer, white bread flour and cassava flour. Everything extra refined to make extra white and making it less nutritious.
The focus point here is on the combination of maize and cassava flour. Cassava represents the ancient crop while maize is the new crop (non-indigenous in Africa, introduced on the continent by Portuguese slave traders about 100 years ago (or even more, as I’m not sure of this fact yet) as a cheap staple food to keep slaves alive. Nowadays, maize is being seen as the traditional staple crop in the Zambian and Malawian culture.
This performance is, besides addressing deforestation, also about “pure nature” versus “refined”, “processed” and “chemical enhanced” even though all raw materials, used for all kinds of end products are in fact natural. This performance means to show, how humanity is intervening in nature around us, while it is at the same time itself intervening in a natural forest.