Fattening Spaces: Spatial and Material Practices for Challenging Anti-Fat Ideologies

The exegesis develops and explores the potential of ‘fattening’ as a methodology for art making. Fattening is conceptualised through an investigation into fat as a material, as an identity and as a form of embodiment. The exegesis examines normative conceptions of the body that fail to account for the ways in which certain bodies inhabit space differently. It questions understandings of the body in contemporary art that treat the body as equivalent to a coherent formal object with inherent boundaries. Furthermore, the research questions assumptions that the bodies of viewers adhere to normative height, weight, shape, size, and mobility ranges.