So I had to swallow it

A festively set table, a family dinner: rituals of domestic harmony unravel into a quiet violence. The voiceover recounts the dismantling of the patriarchal figure, which mutates into an act of cannibalism, both grotesque and inevitable. The meal, once a spread of traditional Willow Creek dishes, succumbs to decay, revealing the concealed rot beneath the veneer of conviviality. Food degrades, putrefies; the once-inviting chocolate cake lingers as a perverse emblem of indulgence and corruption. Inspired by Louise Bourgeois’ assertion, “So I had to swallow it,” the work confronts the act of internalizing oppression, embodying rage that is both swallowed and regurgitated. Echoing Bourgeois’ The Destruction of the Father (1974), where a tyrannical patriarch is devoured by his children, the piece translates emotional repression into an unsettling visual language. This short machinima, created by Letizia Montemurro using The Sims 4, harnesses the game’s mechanics — its stylized deterioration, its artificial textures — to underscore the brutality of consumption, turning the familiar into the grotesque. The polished surfaces of simulation and the crude finality of rot collide, exposing the uneasy tension between nostalgia and decomposition, tradition and ruin.