YOU LOOK SO HEALTHY

Exhibition Audio

SHOW STATEMENT

In my work, I’m always thinking about the delicate balance between repulsion and attraction. My practice allows me to reflect upon and dissect my decade long struggle with an eating disorder. This body of work entitled: you look so healthy is a recollection of what it was like to relapse over and over again, it’s about the complete devastation, isolation, and bitter euphoria of my illness. Anorexia is an enigma, it is terrifying, alluring, completely repulsive all at once. I hate who I’ve become with it but it’s terrifying to imagine who I will be without it. It is a sweet poison. I can’t help but gulp it down, even though I know it’s killing me, infecting me. 

These portraits represent a subtle yet incessant unraveling, from afar they appear bright and beautiful but upon second glance, things are not as they seem. There’s bruising, blood, tears: all visible manifestations of pain. That is what makes eating disorders so insidious, no matter how your body presents, internally there is so much inescapable, constant pain, it bores into you, infiltrating every cell in your body until you’re consumed by it. Invisible illness is isolation, by combining paint, thread, and insects I encourage you to look closer, to question aesthetic, superficial beauty and dig deeper.

Perfect masks are convincing until they aren’t. Thread is strong until it snaps and insects are ugly until the light glistens softly through their wings. Despite being fully recovered there is a part of me that will always miss being sick. Threads and insects reflect that tenuous duality, reminding us that where there is beauty there is darkness and where there is rot, there is life, rebirth, and purity. you look so healthy  is an invitation to step into my inner world but also a lesson in truly seeing others, looking past facades unto complicated truths.