Chocolate, nails and ice. These are the things used by Hiroko Kikuchi, the education/outreach coordinator at the List Visual Arts Center, in an untitled performance art piece she recently presented at the Essex Art Center. Paul Parcellin at Retro-Rocket.com, Boston's journal of visual art, film and video, called her performance a "touching meditation on food and the body...For Kikuchi, the sweet byproduct of the cocoa bean seems alternately nutritious, insidiously narcotic-like, and perhaps in large enough doses, toxic--a complex set of associations that are thought-provoking, though hardly sweet."
She'll perform it again on Saturday, Feb. 22 at noon at the Center (56 Island St., Lawrence). The performances are part of an exhibition titled "Kyogen," on view through Friday, Feb. 28, which also includes three of Kikuchi's small 3-D works: "Uncanny Alien, looking for the fantasy"; "Future shock, that is to be, that is yet to come"; and "A Gift from the Privilege, From Desperation to Restoration."
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 5, 2003.
