Andrea Ferrero’s signature sculptures are as transient as they are touchable, edible, and interactive. From afar, her works look like ancient archeological ruins and appear to be made of long-lasting materials: light pink Marmol, solid porcelain, and white stone that looks rusted by time. Yet, the works acquire deeper meanings as we approach them, interact with them, and find that each piece is made of delicate white chocolate, melted and cast by the artist. Ferrero, who lives and works between Lima and Mexico City, explores power structures such as colonialism and conquest, the symbolic meanings of ancient architecture, and how these power structures and meanings play out in urban public spaces. The temporal aspect of her materials is central to the meaning of her work. 

Ferrero’s  2023 exhibit, “all my life i've been afraid of power,” at Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn, includes white chocolate sculptures shaped of ancient Roman ruins, some large-scaled, spread between the gallery space. Each piece re-appropriates and re-signifies aspects of power as it confronts colonial ideology. “I allow the audience to eat my sculptures, at my studio and at the gallery, with the idea that they will slowly destroy themselves through consumption,” she said. During her Miami residency, Ferrero incorporated small hand-sculpted silver-appearing fruit flies, which she placed on top of her sculptures to speak to excess consumption and wasteful behaviors of the wealthy. 

Working with the 18th-century European notion of banquets and opulence reserved only for the mega-rich, Ferrero, who started experimenting with chocolate after starting her own vintage dessert shop during the pandemic, plays with the famous “let them eat cake” response from Marie-Antoinette to the peasants. Reversing the power dynamic and adding some irony, her audiences can eat her aesthetically beautiful, sweet sculptures, touch them, and take them home.  “I found that chocolate has so many symbolic and conceptual elements,” Ferrero explained. Once a sacred ingredient of Mesoamerican culture, chocolate became a commodity of European conquest and luxury consumption. The Aztecs and Incas from the regions of what is now Mexico and Peru, who used chocolate as a sacred ritual, served it bitter and pure. Later, through European colonization, ingredients such as sugar and milk were added and assimilated into the cacao, which became a sweet good only accessible to the rich. 

The history of chocolate accompanied the narrative of conquest. In all their delicacy, Ferrero's pieces also function as smaller acts of subversion to power structures. Be sure to try one.