About the artwork:

Piece of meat communicates personal relations of feeling disconnected to my body, especially living as a young woman. It predominately embodies the weight of societal ideals within femininity including the picking apart of my own self-image, leaving me with a transformed and trapped form of identity. The sexualisation of the female body of which has been built up and normalised over history is visually translated. I have personally, as well as many women felt objectified and disregarded, as though an animal, hence the pig’s head taking form of the face instead of my own. My brain has often felt confused and mentally suffocated, unable to comfortably see myself. In creating the pig’s head, a real-life one was transported from a butcher and casted. The symbolism of this process relates to the normalised view that happens for many objectified women. Feelings surface as though the body is the most important part, anything else is irrelevant. The figure of the sculpture is left limp, tangled, delicate and vulnerable. Experiences of objectification have left me feeling hyper-aware of my anatomy. On how to present it in a world full of watching eyes. The incorporation of tights communicates messages on vulnerability and sexualisation, whilst feeling slumped in feelings of what a body ‘should be like’. Furthermore, there are many normal features of a body that are picked apart and made to feel insecure about, such as cellulite. The texturing of the limbs expresses these features. Details of one’s body are not there to be picked apart to the point of where they no longer see themselves for who they are. They are to be lived in and loved.