Patience Ma
Keeping Up With the Kucumber
Class of: 2028
Major: Strategic Design and Management BBA
Medium: Cucumber, cutting board, plastic wrap
Faculty: Diana Shpungin
Prompt: With a strong emphasis on the conceptual relationship between material and method, form and subject, students will create an artwork that will differ in media and surface. Random selections of invented non- traditional materials will be chosen out of a grab bag as a launching point (the supplementary choice of materials and surface can be added as necessary to strengthen the idea). After a material is selected students choose a location and/or object(s) from politics, history, pop culture to render and in turn create new meaning through irony, metaphor, poetics, commentary, critique or symbolism.
Reality TV shows fascinate our social group these days a lot; they reveal so much about the modern world, how we blur the lines between authenticity and entertainment and how even the simplest moments can become cultural phenomenal. Reality shows were originally famous for the fact that they documented reality through a comedian’s lens. However, the true essence of reality shows has shifted to the concentration on “show” instead of “reality” as social media progressed. People need more and stronger stimulation in this transient world.
When Kendall Jenner’s cucumber-chopping scene went viral, it wasn’t just funny; it was a snapshot of a society that elevates the mundane into a societal “mythology”. Since cucumber has been embodied with such a mythological and ridiculous concept after the Kendall event, I wanted to play with this idea using cucumbers—humble, wholesome, and wonderfully absurd—to spark conversations about what we value, consume, and emulate.
Cucumbers, with their crisp freshness and inevitable softening, became my metaphor. They’re fleeting, like the trends and dramas these shows perpetuate, but they’re also grounding. By recreating that infamous scene in such a hilarious, transient medium, I hope to redirect our attention to what truly nourishes us— creativity, community, imperfection—instead of just “keeping up”.