For the exhibition at CIFO, Soares partnered with Kreëmart and proposed a new interactive outdoor installation, Push Pull (2013), which extends her explorations with sugar. For Soares, sugar is a culturally significant material associated with overconsumption and excess in American society. Although ripe with connotations around the innocence of childhood, it may lead to intoxication and addiction. Sun-warmed masses of taffy will hang from metal hooks traditionally used to pull and stretch the candy, and visitors are invited to consume chunks of the slowly stretching sculptures. Push Pull parodies the line drawn between an art object and the viewer, highlighting the viewer as a consumer willing to cross the line of the socially acceptable in pursuit of pleasure.
