Pearl Necklace
My photographs are an experience of the fat female body in all of its seductive glory. They are a spiritual experience of excess, and of our insatiable appetite for food and for sex.
According to the Body Mass Index I am morbidly obese. My work revolves around this obsession with my fat body and how it functions, how it is viewed in society, and how it takes up space in the world. My photos are a record of my body as living sculpture and a performance for the camera. Rolls hang free, breasts dangle, and things get messy.
In my instant photos, I zoom in. I create snap-shots of my bulbous breasts. I squeeze the bountiful flesh together, abstracting my form while draping pearls, sprinkling glitter, holding fruit, crustaceans, and cream-filled doughnuts on and between the folds. I crop my face out, erasing my identity and creating a backdrop for my humourous and explicit still life set-ups that fetishize food and opulence, while referencing classical Dutch still life painting.
This work is a reflection of a millennial’s experience in the world of art and of social media- a cultural commentary on the corpulent female body in relation to sex and the “forbidden”; a celebration of taboo and fetishism. My goal is to push indulgence to the max, straddling the line between classy and trashy. In the end, the work is about control. It is about the fat woman being the authority for how her body is being consumed while also facilitating an experience of overindulgence where the viewer worships the fleshy fruit that is me.