I can’t bear in mind the primary time I went on a weight loss program. I do know that it should have occurred throughout childhood, however the occasion appears to belong to geological deep time — predating my precise existence, laying a fancy emotional and ideological bedrock upon which the inspiration for my nascent subjectivity was laid.
As an grownup, I’m now curating my first exhibition, Soma Grossa, opening on November seventeenth on the Brew Home Affiliation in Pittsburgh. This combined media group present options all fats artists creating artwork about fatness, and dealing on it has urged me to discover the entanglements between my identification as a fats individual and my curatorial follow and philosophies in methods I used to be not anticipating.
Soma grossa, which accurately means “gross physique,” performs with the double which means of “gross” as each disgusting and as an quantity that exists earlier than any deductions are made. The title is supposed to attract consideration to the easy but ruthless calculus fats persons are consistently subjected to: With none “deductions,” the fats physique is essentially grotesque. Solely as soon as deductions are made — weight is misplaced — can different necessary issues be gained: social capital, romantic success, medical dignity, and so forth. There exists a pressure between spectacle and repression that’s so usually at work relating to fats our bodies: Fats persons are topic to an crucial to cover, make themselves smaller, disappear or cease present fully, by a populace that nonetheless wants fats our bodies that exist in particular acceptable methods — as leisure, ethical analogue, before-and-after horror story, or as autos for humor. The dueling needs of individuals whose worst nightmare is inhabiting a fats physique usually categorical themselves in shaming fats individuals to exit social spheres, solely to convey them again as objects for well-liked consumption.
You condemn us for what you’re certain is rampant gluttony, but bounce on the likelihood to devour us complete. And the artwork world isn’t any exception.
Once I was researching for this exhibition, outcomes had been sparse. Reveals that includes fats our bodies exist, certain, however exhibits centering fatness in a vital means? The 2019 exhibition Past the Physique on the Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia in Milan claimed to “reinterpret [sic] the real-life tales of 4 overweight individuals, portray their phrases straight onto their our bodies,” which had been then photographed for the exhibition. Lauded (nonfat) figural painter Jenny Saville is legendary for her moody, larger-than-life gestural work of fats individuals. Her so-called “fascination with overweight individuals” apparently started when she gained a scholarship to review in the USA and was greeted by herds of fats ladies in buying malls. Saville’s work and the Milan exhibition span the impoverished spectrum from pity to fascination that’s typical of reactions to fats our bodies within the artwork world. I would go as far as to name these works anti-art: Somewhat than partaking with new sensoriums, they merely reinscribe the identical drained tropes of fatphobic hegemony.
The transcendent self-portraits of artists like Laura Aguilar, who embraced the truth that fats our bodies actually take up extra space in a picture than nonfat ones, are few and much between. By photographing her personal fats physique in majestic pure scenes, subverting the historical past of panorama images as a cis White male medium, Aguilar embraced the fats physique by remodeling it right into a literal panorama.
Once I was doing my preliminary digital studio visits for Soma Grossa, I had a fairly good thought of which artists and which works I used to be interested by. Throughout every video chat, I gave a spiel concerning the exhibition, why it was necessary, what sorts of items had been in it, and so forth., then requested every artist to inform me about themselves and their work. Everyone who responded to me was form, considerate, and genuinely enthusiastic about being a part of this present. We talked about how mere illustration is commonly a neoliberal answer for structural inequalities and too usually leads to merely making fats our bodies palatable for consumption by the general public — simply one other option to fulfill the fats calculus. We mentioned the metaphysical censorship of fats lives in a world that makes an attempt to will them out of existence. Many conversations grew to become emotionally charged, as we related not simply as curator and artist however as fellow fat who existed in a shared world regardless of being generally 1000’s of miles away. We knew why this present was necessary — huge — larger nonetheless. However what’s my position there as a curator? What does it imply for fatness to be a part of my curating philosophy? How do I assuage the strain between empathy and objectivity, creating and experiencing?
Earlier than engaged on this exhibition, I assumed curating could be an augmented model of my work as editor of an arts publication: god’s eye view, there to assist convey out the artists’ visions in a unified, thematic means. In a way that is true; as author and curator Tim Clark writes within the introduction to Curator Dialog (2021), “curator” comes from the Latin cura which suggests to take care or oversee. The guide comprises a collection of essays that purpose at reframing — or maybe reorienting — curating as a follow of interpersonal and inter-object caretaking and moral duty. I had all the time thought-about caring for the writers and artists I work with an integral a part of my position in interacting with them. Nevertheless, I didn’t predict that I’d discover myself not solely immersed within the exhibition’s subject material however engaged in and actively cultivating a collection of communities. Curating this present requires not solely pressing and caring consideration to artworks and artists but in addition to the residing ecology of communities that exist inside the radical fats liberation discourse being created between the artists within the present, between myself and the artists, and between the artworks and the viewers. As a researcher and tutorial who was used to desirous about moral duty because the form of “considering via and round” oneself that Isabelle Stengers describes, it was truthfully stunning and disturbing to be introduced so viscerally again into the “private” — one thing that appears virtually taboo and counterproductive of social and cultural duty.
To place it shortly, I had all the time conceptualized good curating as neighborhood constructing; I simply didn’t assume I’d actually really feel like a part of the neighborhood. As any person who way back eschewed weight loss program tradition and physique positivity in favor of radical fats liberation, engaged on Soma Grossa made me understand I used to be following these actions from the shadows. I’m nonetheless nervous to assert fatness as a public identification. With this present, it appears like there’s no turning again.
I’m sitting on the laptop making use of to curate one other present, and the applying asks me to summarize my curatorial philosophy in a single phrase. With out hesitating, I kind an emphatic “fats!”