What is the 'Continental Breakfast' chair from TikTok?
A video of a bizarre chair with the title ‘Continental Breakfast’ has taken over TikTok, but what is it? Read on to find out.
The viral clip shows two women dressed in smart suits and stilettos climbing onto a chair-like structure in a very strange position.
It has been appearing on people’s TikTok For You pages for weeks with no explanation, leaving everyone really confused.
Here’s what’s going on…
What is the ‘Continental Breakfast’ chair?
The peculiar contraption is part of an art installation that was on view at the Meredith Rosen Gallery in New York from March to April 2023.
It was made by an artist called Anna Uddenberg who took inspiration from our increasingly automated environment and distorted it into “sexualized pseudo-functional sculptures”.
The works are titled ‘Continental Breakfast’ and “speak specifically to the body as an asset to modify, control in order to relinquish autonomy to user-friendly technologies,” a press release says.
“Similar to a BDSM contractual agreement, the body is wilfully supported, entrapped, pampered and ultimately rendered useless, all while on view for public consumption.”
It draws inspiration from airline seats, hospital architecture and hotel design, and the sculptures express
a “hyper-functionality inaccessible to human use”.
The title also links to the corporate world, where continental breakfasts are offered, and the women’s clothing echoes this too.
Who is Anna Uddenberg?
Born in 1982, Uddenberg is a Swedish artist based in Berlin who is known for her sculptural and performative
installations.
All of her work explored the merging of the body and self with technology and she has had many exhibitions across the world.
She “investigates how body culture, spirituality, and self-staging are intertwined with the mediation and production of subjectivity by new technologies and circulation of forms,” her website says.
Some of her 2023 work has appeared in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan, Mendes Wood DM in Sao Paolo and PLATO in Czechia.
TikTok was really confused
One video of the art installation has had more than 19 million views and social media users were really baffled in the comments.
One person wrote: “Can someone please tell me what this is.”
“Still so confused on what this is,” said another.
A third person added: “This has ZERO explanation to it?”
“Am I the only one that doesn’t understand what this is?” said another.
Someone else commented: “Genuinely though… what is this?
It comes just weeks after a strange video of a ‘giant lawn worm’ left TikTok squirming – but you shouldn’t believe everything you see online.
