Fleshy Fruit
Fleshy Fruit is an experience of the fat female body in all of its seductive glory.
According to the Body Mass Index I am morbidly obese. I am shapely, curvy. In the history of art, I am Venus. Fleshy Fruit is a series of photographic selfies that are a record of a living sculpture and of a performance for the camera. I take all photos alone with a shutter release remote, without anxiety about what is beautiful, sexy, expected. Rolls hang free, breasts dangle, and things get messy.
In my digital photographs I objectify myself, but redefine the terms in which I am being objectified. Wearing nothing but platform glitter stilettos, I both invite and reject the viewer’s gaze: I gaze back knowingly, self-assured. I am both the see-er and the seen.
In my instant photographs, 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 and cream-filled doughnuts on and between the folds. I crop my face out, erasing my identity and creating a backdrop for my sexually explicit still life set-ups that fetishize food and sexual indulgence.
Fleshy Fruit is a spiritual experience of excess, and of our insatiable appetite for food and sex. The viewer visually consumes, admires, and even worships the fleshy fruit that is Venus- me. And as the viewer devours my image, I glare back fiercely. In the end, I bestow my version of the ultimate judgment upon the viewer.
Photos of Fleshy Fruit by Charlie Hickey
Poster created by Hollie Lyko