Rustcakes, the Berlin-based bakery, marries materialistic allure with a fresh aesthetic style, channelling Millenial and Gen-Z's obsession with curated chaos. After spending hours and hours scrolling down her Insta profile filled with colourful, kitschy cakes, I decided to have a studio visit with Rustcakes. She welcomed me in a fancy café in Berlin Mitte, where she works as an employee and maintains her cake practice. I visited her not only to appeal my kink towards the eclectic cakes but to understand why this Insta generation is so drawn to something that seems to be hasty and tasteless at first sight.

I approached her with the intrigue of a curator exploring the boundless terrain of late capitalism. My perspective framed her craft as a bold commentary on the self-indulgent, individualistic, and relentlessly materialistic cravings that define our times, embracing the ethos of our Insta-savvy generation.

So, how did you end up making cakes?

I always liked baking and cooking. When I turned twenty-two I moved to Prague to study sociology and had a part-time job in a restaurant which became my main job as I wasn’t enjoying studying. It was a stressful 13-hour job with a lousy paycheck so I have decided to quit and make vegan cakes. But I wasn't happy in Prague and moved to Berlin where I could finally start to work on my baking skills without worrying about paying rent and all. In 2020 I founded Rustcakes and decided to take a more artistic approach to my work as the traditional decorating was limiting, boring, and to be honest, kind of hard and forced.

How can you manage to do it alone? Do you have time to get inspired? And how can we imagine an order from Rustcakes?

It's not that hard to manage because I maintain boundaries and I don't take more than two orders per day since I still have a job in a cafe where I also make my cakes. I was taking a lot of shifts back then and now I value my free time and try to balance it with my working hours so that I have enough time to rest and do my other projects, concentrate on hobbies, and social life.

I get inspired naturally by objects outside, nature, and the online world. To make an order you can visit my website and there you can choose what flavours you want, and colours. Also, a little customization is possible if desired.

Would you consider your work as an art project?

Yes, but only when it comes to the decorative and shaping part. The rest is just about skills, a repetitive, sometimes therapeutic, sometimes annoying process. I enjoy both, but decorating is the artsy step.

Do you mind being labelled as someone who holds a mirror to a very fast consumer society, to the appearance-focused, individualistic, materialist insta-culture, and floods it with her weird, kitschy stuff?

I don't like labels and don't like rustcakes to be viewed as Instagram art. I do my thing which I am good at and I would like to stay with that.

One thing we haven’t tackled yet is where did you learn all of these? Your cakes share similarities with pottery making, they are ephemeral sculptures.

Thank you for saying that, I appreciate it. I’m self-taught and I work intuitively most of the time.

Have you ever considered applying for an art residency?

No, I haven't but I would love to. If such a thing happened, I would prefer to do that to make big sculptures and have the opportunity to work with different materials and mediums rather than with food.