How does one live in a body when they have spent an entire lifetime trying to escape it? “The Fingers Won’t Let Go” is a painfully honest memoir. Through performance, video, and audio I navigate many years of bullying due to fatphobia and its implications on mental health. The audio and spoken word walks us through childhood and teenage experiences of bullying, while also sharing anecdotes on how bullying is alive and well during adult life. The work forms and archive of feelings and trauma – it is an amalgamation of shame, intimacy, grief, rage, love, and ultimately catharsis.

The ubiquitousness of hands and fingers permeate throughout the work, but even literally as molds of hands climb my body. All of the hands are in the forms they take when bullying the fat body: pinching nipples, grabbing skin folds, slapping faces, or in the shape of a fist. I purposefully use my own hands to signify the internalizing of fatphobia that one endures after surviving such events; we become our own bullies. Ultimately, the piece ends with the dream of having the fingers finally let go.

This archive of trauma is also a queer coming out story. Not only is the piece an outing as a survivor of bullying, but also an outing for cis-gender male, homosocial relationships. Both run parallel as the burden not to tell creates its own network of psychic wounds that far exceed the event itself. I place moments of extreme trauma alongside moments of everyday emotional distress that are often the only sign that trauma’s effects are still being felt.

Ultimately, the work seeks to create a space and dialogue towards fat liberation. Everyday forms of trauma, especially those emerging from systemic forms of oppression demand an understanding of trauma that moves beyond the clinical constructions of psychology. Once the cause of trauma becomes more diffuse, so too the cures, opening up the need to change social structures in a broader form rather than focusing on the individual. I hope that activism around fat liberation becomes a response to psychic needs.

The Fingers Won’t Let Go
20-minute audio, video, and performance, silicone hands, metal skewers, yellow shirt, yellow balloons, 2023, variable dimensions

The Losses, The Heartbreaks, The Hungers… is a photographic body of work in which I engage in a conversation with myself on mental health and self-compassion. I am able to exist with myself within the same frame through the use of compositing techniques that depict a multiplicity of selves. In the work, I dwell in an isolated, psychological space that is constructed through a claustrophobic framing of the camera and black and white film imagery that accentuates the shadows and the light. The interactions with myself are of mixed nature: at times I present acts of self-loathing, but other times I show acts of self-compassion. 

Through the exploration of self as multiples, I’m able to expand on the notion of self-portraiture and scrutinize homosocial relationships, as my body begins to become a placeholder for an “other.” I complicate the power dynamic through interactions with myself. In a photograph, two bodies face each other while in bed: one is pinned down by the other, but the one on top is being gagged by the camera’s remote control, which is also in the one on the bottom’s hand. This body of work rejects the binary notion of heterosocial power dynamics that are mapped onto homosocial relationships; i.e. those roles that are labeled as dominant and as submissive. 

All in all, the work explores agency from a subjugated position of depression and othering from within queer communities. I use my self-portraits as a tool for catharsis, as a way of dealing with my own mental health issues. Following Ann Cvetkovich’s proposal on depression as an opportunity for reexamination and change, my work crafts a queer space that accounts for depression and shame as an entry into discussions about contemporary queer culture and homosocial relationships. 

The Body is Still Experiencing/Expecting Some (Dis)Comfort
multi-channel video installation, 2019, variable dimensions

The Body is Still Experiencing/Expecting Some (Dis)Comfort is an immersive video installation featuring eight interrelated performances. The gestures in these videos not only speak to acts of comfort and discomfort with the body, but also to issues of desire; desire for an ideal, desire for food, desire for pleasure, sexual desire, a desire to fit in, and more.

In Self-Indulgence, a gentle act of eating a tres leches cake with the face is confounded between the high of a binge and a possible sexual act. Intimate portrays an anxious body in bed when affronted with the viewer’s gaze. The source of pleasure is confused in Worth as the fat body is abstracted and commodified, and muscular models are projected on it. Whether through the changing of the body or through mass production of pants, the grueling process of pants fitting is on display in Properly Fit as frustration sets in when no pants fit the body. The face is vigorously exfoliated and obscured in soap in Grime, a process reminiscent of waterboarding. The fat body rebels and remains in repose when confronted with exercising and idealized bodies in Exertion. In To Make Neat or Attractive, the act of grooming each other results in opposing reactions as the bodies are different.

Although some humor is experienced in the works, desire takes on a somber tone: through the sounds of lapping cake, the ripping and rustling of fabric, and the caressing and slapping skin, and in the viewers acknowledgment of the struggle that the different desires bring. These eight works address larger concerns with the commodification of the male body in society and through mass media, and the marginalization of non-conforming and fat male bodies. They straddle a fine line between the desire for the ideal body for oneself and for consumption, versus its deconstruction, and consequential acceptance of the non-normalized queer body.  

This body serves as target practice for you to direct your outrage.

This body draws so much anger from those I have been trained to desire.

This body has learned its lesson.

This body was taken from me so long ago, though it was never mine to begin with.

How thin do you have to be to be loved?

How does one live in a body when they have spent a lifetime trying to escape it?

It must be nice to just be a body.

・Words inspired by the writings of Caleb Luna ・

Touch Grab Pinch Twist is a performative work which culminates in this series of twelve etchings. In front of my photographic camera, I embody the trauma within my own body – a body that was bullied for being fat – into these contortions of flesh, skin folds, and striations. The frustration is transferred through soft-ground and aquatint on to the copper plate. Once the line work is done the copper plate is is then subsequently tortured by throwing and scraping over the floor. The resulting action leaves behind scratches on the copperplate that look like the marks of lashes over the body.

Touch Grab Pinch Twist
softground and aquatint etching, 2019-2022, edition of 5
sheet: 22″ x 15″, image: 10″ x 8″

Limes galore! Through the language of the classical still life, Still Life with Lime Cake, Tea, and Projected Body (The Failed Manifestation) speaks to the the fat body in the struggle to attain the idealized body. The limes in this still life have been transformed from a healthy citrus fruit into a lush and sinful green cake. The pervasive lime-green color affects the ability to manifest by acting negatively to what is desired. The ideal body is desired but is not manifested, and its projection shames the fat body. A supposed omen to prosperity, the skin of the already-squeezed-out-of-life and aging lime is removed in the form of a spiral that reaches the flesh – a metaphor of time and the journey of life.

This failed ideal is imposed over the cake, whose body is lifted by a cake stand in an attempt to honor it, but the fact that it is made out of fragile glass uplifts it in a precarious situation. The cake body has been betrayed by the purity and excellence of the silver knife as it stabs deep into its flesh, revealing its gooey layers.

The violet color of the thistle and vase is an attempt to balance the lime-green color and its failed omen, but it comes as a double edge sword. With its thorny reputation, the ever-damaging purple thistle overpowers the fragile green carnation’s flesh, keeping its fleshy petals in check and imbuing the body with a curse. But the failed presage of a tipped tea cup distorts the message in the tea leaves, leaving this fat body in a treacherous situation while being blinded by its ideal. The low weight of a light, white cloth further shames this cake with its symbolism of masculinity. 

Still Life with Lime Cake, Tea, and Projected Body: The Failed Manifestation
digital chromogenic print, 2018, 44″ x 55″

Emotional Binge Chemigrams: Tres Leches Cake is a series that records the leftover indexical mark of an emotional eating binge on a photographic emulsion. A tres leches cake is served on a photo paper from where the delicacy is consumed. The resulting smear on the emulsion is then processed through photographic chemicals, leaving distinct patterns as it dissolves in the liquid.

Each tile represents a particular binge session on a particular date. These chemigrams show the abject relationships that people can form with food. Each tile is the recording of the search for pleasure that is supposed to numb the frustration of a negative emotion. A quick high is achieved at the moment, but guilt is however the lingering emotion after a binge, and these tiles represent a reminder of such. Paradoxically beauty is observed within these patterns on the emulsion. Just as the session is characterized by both frustration and pleasure, viewing these chemigrams causes guilt, shame, and appeal.

This project follows the idea of emotional food journals, a technique and tool recommended for people that experience emotional eating due to negative emotions. Tracking the emotions and the eating would help determine what sort of emotions drives one to the binge, and which kinds of food are likely to be consumed.

These works form part of a large mural that contain 36 individual chemigrams.

Binge Chemigrams: Tres Leches Cake
gelatin silver print, 2018, 90″ x 115″

Binge Chemigrams: Tres Leches Cake (installation composite view)
gelatin silver print, 2018, 90″ x 115″

The work now becomes a performance, as I struggle to take over someone else’s body. Fit and muscular models follow a series of instructions given by me; their poses highlight the strength of their bodies as they flex, pose, and struggle against a yet to be seen adversary. Following the photographic session, I step into the frame, mimicking many of their poses and flexes, attempting to wear their bodies as mine and take over their presence. My self-portraiture has been one of self-discovery and a confessional revealing of a private conflict, while at the same time trying to be political. This works explores the intersectionality between body image ideals and mental health as subject matter.

Wearing Bodies
digital chromogenic print, 2017, 24″ x 90″ (tetraptych)

Wearing Bodies: Frieze
digital chromogenic print, 2018, 40″ x 275″

The Emotional Eating Cookbook describes and explores my personal relationship with food, specifically that of trigger foods: sets of go-to foods during moments of negative emotions. These cravings usually (d)evolve into a binge, a period of uncontrolled and compulsive overeating, and ultimately, these sessions are all about numbing emotions or self-loathe. The Emotional Eating Cookbook is a taxonomic, if one might say, confessional diary of the negative emotions behind trigger foods. This novel project brings together the areas of psychology, photography, and culinary tradition into a visual cornucopia of tension, desire, and guilt.

This project is obviously inspired by cookbooks and food photography, but also emotional food journals. An emotional food journal is a technique and tool recommended for people suffering from emotional overeating. The idea is to write down what you ate, when you ate, how you felt, whether you were physically (versus emotionally) hungry, and how you felt afterward. Tracking the emotions and the eating would help determine what sort of emotions drives one to the kitchen, and which kinds of food are likely to be consumed. Rather than taking the form of a journal, each page of the cookbook features a recipe for a particular trigger food. The book follows the style of traditional cookbooks, but specifically that genre of food memoirs including the author’s personal narrative imbued with nostalgia. Thus, the text associated with the recipes includes diaristic narratives on emotions, mechanisms, preparation, and tips on how to “guiltily” enjoy these trigger foods. There’s no doubt that these associated texts, introductions, and other narratives are imbued with irony, cynicism, and sarcasm.

Emotional Eating Cookbook
digital chromogenic print, 2015, 11″ x 8.5″

Initially inspired by representation of the body on social media, the “Wearing Bodies” series, the fantasy of a perfect body comes closer to reality as I try on body parts as articles of clothing.  I carry and put on my body idealized characters, using my hands and other tools to reshape my own body, at times a struggle.  In one photograph, I put on chiseled pectorals and ripped abdominals as if they were a tank top, while at the same time pushing down actual belly flab.

Though this pursuit is driven by the idea that body perfection will also bring happiness, the reality is the opposite, where unattainable goals wear down the psyche.  The title of the series not only highlights the action depicted in the series, but also the wearing down of mental health.  Scrutiny of male bodies in art and in media has intensified during the last decade.  Bodies have been classified, divided, objectified, and subjectified, and their representation has now reached an unattainable state as the urge to have perfect and flawless bodies becomes stronger.

Wearing Bodies: Selfies
digital images, 2016-ongoing, various sizes

The work titled “Undesires,” uses the language of film noir in a non-canonical form. The film noir style is reduced to its most basic element, the chiaroscuro, to highlight the subject matter of body image ideals. Skin folds are imbued with a different reading through the strong use of shadows. The intentional use of black and white imagery reduces the subject matter to its simplest texture. Striations become apparent and break with the topography of undulations and curves. An intense cropping pushes reality into abstraction revealing beautiful folds and structures, a sculpture if one might say.

The work is a pentaptych of photographs that portray the dramatic movement and dance of these sculptures. It creates beauty out of unwanted traits, while at the same time pays them tribute. It is but a single work in a larger oeuvre on body ideals and dysmorphia that constantly goes back and forth between the frustrating to the jocular, always injecting a clashing tension.

Undesires
gelatin silver print, 2014, 16″ x 64″ (pentaptych)

Having worked for years as a scientific photographer, these works have been a natural transition from science into the arts. In this series I seek to abstract the botanical world into landscapes that are usually unseen or unnoticed by the naked eye. I purposely shoot in black and white film so as to remove color, a potential element that may cover up or distract the attention from textures and shapes only seen in the botanical world. Concomitantly, through the use of macroscopic lenses and intense cropping the photographed subject becomes topography; thus highlighting the characters of particular species. Because of this deconstruction of color and reconstruction of form and shape, at times, the viewer is unaware of the depicted botanical nature. Yet the abstraction is not only about cropping techniques and chromatic removal, but lighting the subject through a severe chiaroscuro. As the name implies, Botanical Noir uses the film noir visual language in a non-canonical form to create the drama of unknown botanical structures emerging from a sea of black.

I have been studying various themes through my photographic lens, especially nature and abstractions. I try to always pay attention to the textures found in the world surrounding me. After hundreds of photos, I have discovered that there are three leitmotifs in the images that I capture: texture, decay, and nature.

Contemplating these concepts together, I have discovered that they converge in a cyclic manner. Nature exists with its own textures including those created by decay. Though at some point it seems the decay process takes over with its own intrinsic textures, the cycle continues on to make room for nature to reinvent itself in decay’s crevasses.

This photographic collection tries to show that side of nature that we don’t see every day, that of an agent of transition leading to a reclamation of the man-made spaces.

These images formed part of “Transiciones,” an exhibit presente at the Galería Delta Picó at the Liga de Estudiantes de Artes de San Juan, Puerto Rico on March 2006. All photographic works were shot on 35mm film and hand printed on fiber paper. The images on this website were produced from digital scans of the negatives.

Bio

Néstor Pérez-Molière was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently resides in The Bronx, New York. His art entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis. Through this cathartic process he hopes to connect with the viewer’s struggles and depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a source for political action rather than its antithesis. Néstor exposes mental health issues like depression, dysmorphia, food addictions, and loneliness: describing their mechanisms, scrutinizing their origins, and illuminating the impossibility of fixing them. His practice mainly takes place in the realm of photography but has also incorporated performance, drawing, video, installation, and intaglio techniques into his works. 

He received an MFA from Hunter College and holds a BSc in Botany. He was part of EmergeNYC 2023, Artist in the Marketplace 2017, and Creative Capital’s Taller 2019 mentorship programs, and was included in The Bronx Museum of the Art’s Fourth Biennial. He has exhibited at the Museo de las Américas, the Clemente Soto Vélez, Bronx Art Space, Longwood Gallery, and the Liga de Estudiantes de Artes de San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2023 he will be a resident at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Governors Island Arts Center and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts residencies. Interested in becoming an educator, he teaches, and has taught, digital and darkroom photography, as well as media literacy at the International Center of Photography, Parsons School of Design, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Fairleigh Dickinson University, THE POINT CDC, and StrudelMediaLive.

Artist Statement

My artwork entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis. Through this cathartic process, I hope to depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a source for political action rather than its antithesis. I expose mental health issues like depression, dysmorphia, food addictions, loneliness, and internalized fatphobia: describing their mechanisms, scrutinizing their origins, and illuminating the impossibility of fixing them. 

I work mainly in the photographic and performative realms as I turn my camera onto myself to scrutinize my “undesires” and compare them with my desires. Through many of my works, I toy with the idea of refusing reality and constructing a fantasy, like compositing idealized body parts on top of my own. I show both comfort and discomfort of the body through video performances speaking to commodification of cis-gender, male bodies and marginalization of fat bodies. Using a diaristic cookbook approach, I dissect negative relationships with food. By presenting a multiplicity of selves within the same photographic frame, I attempt to show self-compassion by depicting care and intimacy with myself. In speaking of the inadequacies of belonging to cis-gender, gay male communities, I dream of a queer utopia that dares to look at our ecologies of care. Using personal archives, the memoir, and performance, I painfully scrutinize the effects of bullying and internalized fatphobia on mental health. 

I am very interested in the idea that talking about mental health issues can serve as an opportunity for reexamination and change, and ultimately, catharsis. Through my creative process I engage the viewer into open and productive conversations surrounding mental health that will help us deal better with these issues, thus leveling the ground on structural inequities that favor the elated. My work also crafts a queer space that accounts for depression and shame as an entry into discussions about contemporary queer culture and homosocial relationships. All in all, the works explore agency from a subjugated position of depression and othering from within queer communities.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

2021     
M.F.A. – Studio Art, Photography. Hunter College, School of Arts and Sciences, The City University of New York, NY

2016     
B.A. – Studio Art, Photography. Hunter College, School of Arts and Sciences, The City University of New York, NY

2001     
B.S. Biological Sciences, Botany & German Minor, Cum Laude. University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

Solo Exhibitions

2023
The Fingers Won’t Let Go, Abrons Art Center, New York, NY
The Fingers Won’t Let Go, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Center at Governors Island, New York, NY

2021   
The Losses, The Heartbreaks, The Hungers… Empty Set, Bronx, NY
El cuerpo todavía está experimentando / esperando cierta (in)comodidad  :Pública Espacio Cultural, San Juan, PR

2006  
Transiciones.  Liga de Estudiantes de Artes de San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Group Exhibitions

2024
Never Wait!/¡Nunca Esperes! Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY
BxAF. Bronx Arts Factory, Bronx, NY

2023
The Emotional Show. Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas, NV
Queer Nature. Bronx Art Space, Bronx, NY
Hold For Discussion! 621 Gallery, Tallahassee, FL
The Word Camera Means Room. 205 Project Space, Hunter College, New York, NY 
Instructors Show, Manhattan Graphics Center, New York, NY

2022
Soma Grossa. Brew House Association, Pittsburgh, PA
My Body/My Battle. AAA3A, Bronx, NY
Linha de Agua, Bienal de Arte Contemporânea de Trás-os-Montes. Macedo de Cavaleiros, Portugal

2021     
mirror/stage. 205 Hudson Gallery, New York, NY
Lifting Off Into the Sun. Satellite Art Club, Brooklyn, NY
Fleeting Moments: Temporality and the Still Life. Analog Forever Magazine, online

2020     
Expect Some Discomfort. Empty Set, Bronx, NY 
Leyline of Abundance. Puppy American, Bronx, NY

2019     
Membranes.  En Foco presents the Apartment Gallery series, Hamilton Landmark Galleries, New York, NY
When One Notices.  The Clemente Soto Vélez, New York, NY
Los 50’s de la Liga.  Museo de las Américas, San Juan, PR
>7.  621 Gallery, Tallahassee, FL             
Gxrl on Grill: Amuse-Bouche.  Honey’s Bar, Brooklyn, NY
Cuerpos Dislocados.  concurrently at Painted Foot Studio, Philadelphia, PA, No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab, Chicago, IL, Liliput Galería, Puebla, México, and La K-Zona, Bogotá, Colombia

2018     
met-a-mor-pho-sis.  Percolate Art Space & Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
PRINTFEST 2018.  International Print Center of New York, New York, NY
Act I, Scene II.  205 Project Space, Hunter College, New York, NY

2017    
Bronx Calling: The Fourth AIM Biennial. Group exhibition.  The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY
Noir: Defining the Melodrama.  Group exhibition.  Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx, NY

Residencies and Awards

2023
Artist-in-Residence, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Center at Governors Island, New York, NY
Artist-in-Residence, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca, NY
EmergeNYC 2023, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Abrons Art Center, New York, NY

2021     
City Artist Corps, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY
Artist-in-Residence, Bronx Art Space at Governors Island, Bronx, NY

2019     
El Taller, Creative Capital, New York, NY

2017    
Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY

2016    
Training for Social Action, Training for Change, Philadelphia, PA

2015    
Artist-in-Residence, Manhattan Graphics Center, New York, NY

Publications

2018     
Binge Chemigrams. The Issue, Photographer’s Collective of Hunter College

2017     
Bronx Calling: The Fourth AIM Biennial Catalogue. The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY
Wearing Bodies. Hysteria Revista! Ciudad de México

2016     
Doorways. The Issue, Photographer’s Collective of Hunter College

2015     
Self-Portrait Landscapes. The Issue, Photographer’s Collective of Hunter College, New York, NY 

2014     
Bizcochos Dominicanos. NPR’s The Salt and Feet in 2 Worlds, New York, NY