Anna Guyton
Artist Statement
Growing up fat during the so-called “obesity epidemic” infused my psyche with stigma. From a young age I was made to understand my body as inherently flawed, something to change, a threat to my own well being. By making art with and about my body, I have found a genuine love of my form that once seemed impossible. My practice employs photography as a means of representing the embodied self, reclaiming space, and fat liberation. I am inviting you to shamelessly notice your own materiality, to connect with your flesh. I am asking you to re-examine your assumptions about fatness as an image, word, and experience.This body of work celebrates fat and transgender forms through abstracted representation, utilizing experimental printing techniques and physical manipulations of prints to emphasize the materiality of both image and form. The experimental inkjet prints begin as digital images, but take on a new life once they are printed on unprimed paper, which cannot absorb ink. The resulting image is wet, feral, and abstracted while still being photographic. The fluidity transgresses borders, it reflects the violation of order and space that is commonly prescribed to fat and queer bodies. As the ink pools and interacts, drying ever so slowly, it collects and reflects traces of the world around it: dust, fleece, the artist’s hand. With various amounts and methods of interference, the surface becomes especially microbial, topographic, or painterly. Bright colors demand visibility, they take up space as much space as needed. The prints, as well as the forms they depict, exude a palpable presence and speak to one another's unapologetic physicality.
Anna Guyton | Portland, OR