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.