Installed at Brew House Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA for Soma Grossa, curated by Anna Mirzayan, Nov-Dec 2022
In the fifteenth century Nero’s Domus Aurea, a forgotten underworld palace was rediscovered beneath the streets of Rome. The rooms were ornately decorated with frescos, mosaics, and abundant gold leaf. In awe, artists would visit the site, becoming heavily influenced by the spectacle. Deeming the ruin ‘grottesca’ or ‘of the cave’, the imagery and word would eventually morph into the contemporary ‘grotesque’.1
Noticing that works depicting fat or transgressive bodies are often categorized as grotesque, Schneider decided to appropriate the root of the word (grotto-esque) to imagine a grotto made of squishy adipose-like bread. This Grotto Breathes is an immersive exhibition; imagery of cheap carbohydrates like bread and potato chips complicates understandings of fatness, food, and the modern-day understanding of the word grotesque. Simultaneously beguiling and threatening 2, we cannot help but be drawn to the grotesque. This murky fascination serves as the catalyst from which to renegotiate understandings of fatness through the architecture and slippery meaning of the grotesque (grotto-esque).
1,2 Squire, Michael. “Fantasies so varied and bizarre”: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the “grotesque”’, in M. Dinter and E. Buckley (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Age of Nero (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), pp. 449. 2012.
A bread making demo and discussion of the themes in the exhibition This Grotto Breathes installed at Neutral Ground Artist Run
Small sculptures representing different types of bariatric surgeries.
Last Ditch is a short video piece that shows my arms, chest, hands, and hair as I stand half immersed in a body of water. In the video I am holding a small ball of bread dough shaped like a belly. I gently submerge the dough belly into the water and begin to wash it while chanting the phrase: “This weight leaves me, in a healthy way. Calmly, easily, without obsession. From 248, to 172. May this spell, make it true.” As I wash the dough belly it dissolves in the water, creating a pale cloud of flour and salt. My incantation repeats deliberately, gaining speed slowly, accompanied by the sounds of the lapping water. Eventually the dough belly is completely dissolved in the water, I rinse my hands and flick off drops of water as the screen fades to black.
As with the Moon Pools, Last Ditch appropriates elements of witchcraft to speak to the nature of diet culture. A ritual rhythmic action combined with the chanting of a spell illustrate the repetitive and obsessive behaviors so commonly enacted by an individual engaged in dieting. The words used in the spell are carefully chosen to show the nature of dieting. “In a healthy way”: when I diet the process is extremely unhealthy. No matter what diet it is (I have tried countless diets over the last 20 years), the restriction of quantity or entire food groups ends up being a destructive process to my body. I experience a foggy brain, hunger pain, nausea, weakness, depression, irritability, and I tend to isolate myself socially. Inevitably, I end up gaining back all the weight I had lost, usually more than I had started with. “Calmly, easily, without obsession”: my mental state during a dieting phase is turbulent, self-absorbed, obsessive, and self-destructive. Nothing matters but weight loss.
A spell demonstrates the wishes of the spell-caster. Usually the spell is cast as a last resort or where no other solutions to a problem are available. This piece shows the anguish in the mind of a chronic dieter. After many years of trying desperately to lose weight I decided to make one last ditch effort with a ritual spell.
Fat Armour, denim, expanding foam, salt dough, blue sand, sequins, plastic jewels, tin, paint, pom-poms, and spray tan, 2017.
Fat Armour, denim, expanding foam, salt dough, blue sand, sequins, plastic jewels, tin, acrylic paint, pom-poms, and spray tan, 2017.
Fat Armour, denim, expanding foam, salt dough, blue sand, sequins, plastic jewels, tin, acrylic paint, pom-poms, and spray tan, 2017.
Mixed media and 3D printed Numina figurine
Aerial perspective of Numina in her home
Body Pillow (prop), denim, rhinestones, spandex, rope, foam stuffing, glue, thread, 46"x 43"x 23", 2017.
2017
2017
Thick, polyurethane foam, denim, satin, 2016.
Big Girl, polyurethane foam, denim, satin, 2016.
Moon Pools, concrete, pebbles, sand, rocks, amethyst, rose quartz, mica, chamomile tea, green tea, almond oil, water, 2016.
Mound, two-part polyurethane foam, spray foam, spray chrome application, 2016. Installed as part of Pop Up Downtown 2016 in Regina, SK.
Hook Island Sea Monster, mirrored plexi, wood, aquarium cling, adhesive, spotlights and colored bulbs, 2015
Champ Search, mirrored plexi, wood, aquarium cling, adhesive, 18”x16”x16”, 2016
TumbleBoo, wood, plexi, tumbleweed, fimo, lights, adhesive, dimensions variable, 2015
Close Encounters, install view, Estevan Art Gallery & Museum, September 11- October 30th 2015
TumbleBoo, wood, plexi, tumbleweed, fimo, lights, adhesive, dimensions variable, 2015
For Queequeg, mirrored plexi, wood, aquarium cling, adhesive, rock, 10”x12”x8”, 2016