Corpor Esurit, or we all deserve a break today is a project by Brooklyn based artist Elizabeth Demaray that involves feeding a population of ants nothing but McDonald's Happy Meals for the duration of at least one month. Commissioned by CEPA Gallery, this large-scale installation spans five exhibition rooms and showcases what may be the world's largest ant farm featuring a skyline of Buffalo for its tiny inhabitants to enjoy. Demaray comments: "When CEPA first asked me to come and do an installation for their Bio Art themed exhibitions I had been reading a lot about the sad state of the American diet and was thinking about the other living organisms that this might be affecting. I wondered--what sort of an impact is junk food having upon the vermin who must depend upon us for sustenance?"

To consider the effect of this new food source upon ants, Demaray paired with Dr. Christine Johnson, a behavioral ecologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who specializes in ants. The two designed an enclosed viewing habitat, identified appropriate human/ant food sources and created a safe foraging site to make sure that no ants would be harmed during the course of Corpor Esurit (meaning the body hungers in Latin).

As to whether the ants will enjoy their new menu, viewers are encouraged to come see for themselves. Visitors to this interactive sculpture are also invited to help monitor the ants' vitality and foraging behavior via a worksheet provided for each segment the installation as it proceeds through the five adjoining rooms of CEPA's Passageway Gallery.

The first chamber offers didactic information about ants and provides viewers the interactive clipboards with questionnaires. The second chamber features a large Plexiglas enclosed ant farm filled with soil and siliceous rocks, through which visitors can observe the ant colony's group-based behavior, nesting and homebuilding habits. This nesting tank is connected to a long, clear Plexiglas tube. Spanning the entire length of the third room, this viewing tunnel allows visitors to see the trail through space that each ant traces as it travels from its home to its new foraging area: a traditional dining room table in the gallery's fourth chamber. Enclosed in a large, ventilated vitrine, this table offers the animals four McDonald's Happy Meals, complete with French fries, apple pies and a spilled milk shake. The installation concludes in the final room of the Passageway Gallery with a wall menu detailing the ingredient makeup of the provided food items, illustrating how an institution such as McDonald's can be found at all levels of the food chain.

Elizabeth Demaray (Brooklyn, NY) is a conceptual artist who utilizes her background in cognitive psychology and neuroscience to create artwork that highlights the kind of incongruities and unexpected connections one finds between the named world and the real. She states: "my interest in both science and art making has been the relationship between perception and non-logical thought. As an artist, I create work that is not rationally based, but may instead be understood in the light of basic psychological needs, such as care, control, taxonomy and love."

Demaray knits sweaters for plants, manufactures alternative forms of housing for hermit crabs and recently created listening stations for birds that play human music in the woods of Pennsylvania. She teaches conceptual art and sculpture at Rutgers University, Camden, where she is Head of the Sculpture Concentration.