Fear Foods
Oil, clay, and molding pastes on stoneware plates
11 x 11 (each plate)
2020
Fear Foods explores the role food plays in my present life, and the broader relationship between eating behaviors, body image, and the implications of Western constructions of binary femininity. In my process, I physically bought, ate, and painted specific foods I once negatively perceived as an adolescent/ballet dancer/gymnast struggling with body shame. The process is important to the work because the bodily and sensory experience involved in staging each fear food, photographing it, and consuming it allowed me to consciously document the emotions that surface, thus affecting the aesthetics.
I approach these seemingly banal American foods with uncertainty, exaggeration, and a bit of darkness. The close-up composition on the plate suggests an allure, yet the stickiness of the three-dimensional texture evokes a feeling of being stuck, entrapped. They convey tensions between lushness and the grotesque, attraction and intimidation, comfort and discomfort, object and subject.
I am interested in pushing food and materials into the territory of the abject to signal the body. When the food/material becomes a body, the spatial experience becomes rather uncomfortable. It can metaphorically suggest what happens when diet culture takes over in the pursuit of achieving "feminine" beauty ideals. Fear Foods considers the ways patriarchal thinking is nuanced in our day to day lives- from our socially constructed relationship with food to how we present ourselves in public versus private spaces.
11 x 11 (each plate)
2020
Fear Foods explores the role food plays in my present life, and the broader relationship between eating behaviors, body image, and the implications of Western constructions of binary femininity. In my process, I physically bought, ate, and painted specific foods I once negatively perceived as an adolescent/ballet dancer/gymnast struggling with body shame. The process is important to the work because the bodily and sensory experience involved in staging each fear food, photographing it, and consuming it allowed me to consciously document the emotions that surface, thus affecting the aesthetics.
I approach these seemingly banal American foods with uncertainty, exaggeration, and a bit of darkness. The close-up composition on the plate suggests an allure, yet the stickiness of the three-dimensional texture evokes a feeling of being stuck, entrapped. They convey tensions between lushness and the grotesque, attraction and intimidation, comfort and discomfort, object and subject.
I am interested in pushing food and materials into the territory of the abject to signal the body. When the food/material becomes a body, the spatial experience becomes rather uncomfortable. It can metaphorically suggest what happens when diet culture takes over in the pursuit of achieving "feminine" beauty ideals. Fear Foods considers the ways patriarchal thinking is nuanced in our day to day lives- from our socially constructed relationship with food to how we present ourselves in public versus private spaces.