Exhibited at Artspace: 16 - 27 June 2021.
https://www.artspace.org.au/program/ideas-platform/2021/fearless-fat-m-sunflower/
Fearless Fat fights for basic human rights for fat people.
Visibility is a key strategy in all human rights campaigns, yet fat bodies are rarely welcomed into art establishments, the media, and even intersectionally ‘woke’ activist spaces. Fearless Fat is an activist artwork that categorically rejects that status-quo, demanding fat people be centered, seen and autonomous.
Fat Activism is a social movement to remove bias in social attitudes, and Fat Activist Art is an art movement in progress. Corporations have capitalised on this by appropriating and twisting activist messages to sell products under the banner of ‘Body Positivity’. This term continues to erase and silence the very fat people who were fighting for the movement at a grass-roots level as early as 1967 when The Fat-In took place in Central Park, New York, and 1969 when the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (NAAFA) was founded (later renamed the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance). (Reference “A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline” by Dr Charlotte Cooper. http://www.charlottecooper.net/downloads/timelinezine/cooper_queertransfatactivisttimeline_zine_0411.pdf )
Fat people aren’t fighting to be thought of as beautiful - beauty is a red herring. We fight for liberation - to abolish systemic discrimination, abuse and fat phobia that kills people of ALL sizes.
As Sofie Hagen writes: “from healthcare professionals refusing to touch fat people or telling us to lose weight instead of looking at our actual symptoms to seatbelts not fitting us in cars” to people “who develop eating disorders and body dysmorphia - all because of the *fear* of getting fat - or who are bullied and end up committing suicide. There are diet pills and weight-loss surgeries that kill people.” (Reference: Sofie Hagen's twitter thread: https://twitter.com/sofiehagen/status/1185994063566266368?lang=en or possibly her book Happy Fat https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Fat-Taking-Space-Shrink/dp/0008293872/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543411177&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=sofie+hagen&dpPl=1&dpID=41b0l3fT4RL&ref=plSrch )
All with active endorsement from the government, the media, the healthcare industry, universities, schools, parents and peers.
People think Big Pharma is killing for profit, yet think Big Diet wants to save - FOR PROFIT. If the products Big Diet peddles worked, their $168.95 billion dollar profits would dry up.
“But health!” the haters cry. Except weight is not an indicator of health, and health is not an indication of value as a human being.
The truth is that many of the deaths attributed to fat are actually caused by the physical damage life long dieting wreaks on the body.
Fearless Fat fights to break out of this context and ask what happens when fat bodies take over a gallery space? Fearless Fat shows fat bellies and bodies being explored by their owners, experienced in a way society finds taboo: without fear. Without hatred.
Ignored at best, viciously abused at worst, the fat belly is the centre of the body, and the metaphorical center of fat oppression. We are told at every level of society from birth that fat bellies should never exist and certainly never be shown.
Fearless Fat viscerally confronts the viewer, demanding an internal dialogue that questions this reality. Why is this body part so erased, dehumanised and reviled?
Fat people are covered under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Yes, even fat people.
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For more information on Fat Liberation I recommend:
https://player.fm/series/2295535/253166707
https://naafa.org/facts1
https://naafa.org/brocheng1
https://www.prlog.org/12829698-how-weight-stigma-benefits-social-policy-makers.html