Stephanie Chang
"Can I take a break from weight losing?"
Prompt: For the fourth project, I was given a couple of personal keywords and several larger context keywords to select. I chose the personal keyword – body, and the larger keyword – safety. We are supposed to combine the two keywords we select into a further topic and develop it into an artwork in any type of media.
I expressed the body insecurity experience I have throughout the years. The excessive diet and workout gave me serious anemia for months, even though I look thin enough in others’ eye, I still craved for the pleasant feeling to see my weight drop quickly every morning. Losing weight became one of my strong obsessions, which had and is still having such a deep effect on both my physical and mental health. So to address the body anxiety issue has become one of my biggest passion, hoping I can contribute my small effort to improving the problem.
I decided to utilize an object to symbolize the exterior beauty standards imposed on my body. And my body interacts with that symbolic object in a performing way. According to the book – The disproportion of body and my own experience mentioned, I decided to use silk stocking as the object. Silk stocking is so sensitive in some ways that I believe it perfectly fits as the tool in my performance art. My mom helped take the photos of me performing. I printed all the photos out leaving white margins beside. And I wrote the disrespectful and hurtful comments I get according to each picture. Then I stuck all the printed picture with written quotes on the corresponding body parts for the final presentation. I thought about different ways to present them, putting them on a piece of clothing, penetrate them together with a single iron needle, etc. But I feel like sticking the work on my body is the most effective way, since this project closely relates to my private body.
