Anna Mirzayan wants to take portrayals of fat people beyond “body positivity.”
For “Soma Grossa,” the new exhibit opening Thu., Nov. 17, at the Brew House Association Gallery, Mirzayan chose work by 10 self-identified fat artists who seek not just to make fat bodies “OK,” but to center them on their own terms.
Contemporary culture, she said, at once objectifies and disdains fat people, presenting them as spectacle while setting them up for ridicule. Research suggests such prejudice can manifest in outcomes including poor medical care for fat people. But the art world doesn’t necessarily do any better, said Mirzayan, a writer, poet and researcher.
“There’s really very few and far-between shows that are interested in radical fat liberation and talking about fatphobia and having artists that are actually in fat bodies doing this work,” she said.
Mirzayan translates the show’s title as “gross body,” with a play on “gross” as both “disgusting” and the totality of something before deductions. She organized the show through the Brew House’s Prospectus Curatorial Residency. She traces her goal with the new exhibit to what she calls “the radical fat-liberation movement,” which she contrasts with the “body positivity” of commercial and artistic efforts to merely include a wider range of body types in public forums.
“Oftentimes, body positivity doesn’t actually center fat bodies, especially not super-fat bodies,” says Mirzayan. “Radical fat liberation is not about assimilating to the desires and the gaze of the general public. It is about a genuine reconfiguration of the way that society functions and sees itself, similar to a lot of other radical political movements.”
The 10 artists in “Soma Grossa” hail from around the country, and as far away as Saskatchewan and the U.K. Their media range from painting and photography to video. Some works depict fat bodies, while others explore the issues the show addresses more metaphorically.
Katie Rauth, of Chicago, creates sculptural installations featuring sculptural glass and fresh produce. Think purple grapes spilling from the cracked side of a decorative glass bowl that seems itself to be slightly slumping in a kind of slow decay.
Rauth places these arrangements on wooden banquet tables, some of which seem to have partially collapsed under the weight of the imaginary feast. She said it’s a commentary on the banquet table as a traditional site of “consumption, excess, and indulgence.”
“We as fat people, we are often told or asked or forced to shrink ourselves in so many ways,” said Rauth. “So [it’s] excess as this sort of radical act of claiming identity or claiming space, and pushing against those asks to make ourselves smaller.”
Other artists looking to take control of the narrative around fatness are Danielle Attoe, Ren Buchness, Elisha Cox, Jesse Egner, Amanda Kleinhans, Sophie Pearson, Néstor Daniel Pérez-Molière, Ashley Ramos, and Zoë Schneider.
“Soma Grossa” opens with a reception 6-8:30 p.m. Thu., Nov. 17. The Brew House is located at 711 S. 21st St., on the South Side. More information is here.
