Output details

EXCESSORIES - let's talk about FAT

In the quest for an optimised body that incarnates beauty, wealth, health, and success, a growing cadre of individuals across the social sectors are engaging in fat-managing activities including modifying body parts in operating theatres. This research takes the diverse cultural and social fates of bodily fat as a guiding thread for the on-going investigation into Corporeal Design (Zellweger, 2010). With the specific intention of reviewing the definition of body adornment, i.e. its ability to deal with perceptions of identity, meaning, and distinction, Zellweger continued his research observations in operating theatres. Following the routines of a plastic aesthetic surgeon at work on liposuction, lipoaspiration, and lipofilling led to the development of a body of work utilising scientific glass making techniques, exemplifying empty, translucent volumes, presented in this solo exhibition. Referring to both notions of 'excess' (the etymological meaning of the word ‘luxury’) and 'accessory' (in the sense of superfluous over-consumption), each artefact was marked with a weight reference, referring to actual operation protocols as metaphors for gain and loss.

Papers were presented to social and medical scientists at 'Privileged Embodiments', PEALS Symposium, Newcastle University, 2013; and at the 9th International Bernd-Spiessl-Symposium 2013 for Innovative and Visionary Technologies in Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, Face and Identity/ Ethics/ Human-System Interaction in Basel, Switzerland.

Works from this series have been selected for a juried exhibition at Schmuck 2013, IHM Munich, 2013, at the Pavillon Le Corbusier, Paris, 2013, and at Aesthetics of Manufacture (Galvanised Festival, Sheffield, 2013). Findings of this enquiry have been presented in artist's talks at the Zimmerhof Jewellery Symposium, Germany, 2012, and Cranbrook Academy of Art, USA, 2012.