Artist Statement
The fetishisation of food has become a hugely important aspect of my practice. The playful and flirtatious nature of eating on camera for an audience to document the sexualised reactions has developed from paintings of a “sexual” emoji fruit machine into a grotesque representation of the female body as an object to be consumed, mainly using performance and film. I have challenged the use of fruit emojis as representations of the female body, such as cherries and peaches, and created a series of films documenting my transformation into these specific fruits, which have been inspired by ORLAN’s body modifications.
These are shown through projections of my body going through these failing transformations. I have used a combination of marzipan for its fleshy consistency, and fruit for a grotesque and bloodied effect to make cherry breasts and peachy bums and used the left-overs of these performances as pieces in their own right. These pieces are displayed as relief objects to project my films onto and morph my body further, emphasising the transformations.
My work shines a light on the new era of impossible body ideals, where online dating has developed its own sexual language through imagery rather than words, and questions why exactly it is predominantly aimed at women’s bodies.
Documentation
Grotesque Performance, Film, and Images
Contextualisation
The Use of Characters in Feminist Art
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