Chinese artist Song Dong expresses concern with the development of Asian cities which, according to him, all look the same. So he builds his own cities--out of cookies and candy. Mr. Dong has built cityscapes in six different cities, including Beijing and Paris. His latest exhibit, called “Eating the City,” opened in the basement of a London department store on February 15th. 

The exhibit, which depicts a traditional Asian city linked to a more modern city, was constructed out of over 72,000 cookies with various English sounding names including “biscuits,” “digestives,” and “hobnobs.”  Mr. Dong chose his building materials based on the fact that “they are very sweet, so you can't eat a lot of them, otherwise they make you sick.”

Mr. Dong had a team of assistants to help him build the cityscape, but it still took a week.  The assistants were given some drawings done by Mr. Dong as guidelines, but a lot was left to their imaginations.  One member of the team, 25-year-old Kieron Stone said, “We had to build some specific buildings but he has given us a free reign really.  My favorite is one I based on the Empire State Building.”

After the week-long exhibit, the public was invited to eat the city on February 23.  Because the cookies were somewhat stale, Mr. Stone’s advice to anyone so fortunate as to participate was to go for "the ones at the bottom.”

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk

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