Week 9: Suzy Gonzalez

In this week's presentations I really enjoyed the artist Suzy Gonzalez, particularly her work 36-24-36. The first thing that stood out to me were the vibrant colors and the style that made it look like a vintage Coca Cola ad. It's a representation of the female body and the famous measurements 36 bust, 24 waist and 36 hips that results in the 'ideal' body type. Yet it's not a body, it's a conglomerate of different foods, watermelon representing breasts, soda cans in a hourglass shape that make up the torso and tacos that extend into wide hips. It's part of her collection Objects of Desire, I felt like as a woman we constantly fight with the concept of desire. We want to be desired as a natural instinct but with the over sexualization of our bodies, we also hate the desire that others have towards us because it makes us feel like just that; an object of desire and not a person of desire. I think it's really clever to use food as a means of art, we all eat and have bodies so its something that relates to everyone and makes you think twice about the ideals about bodies we have as societal norms. Gonzalez also mentions she uses Xicana veganism as a means to decolonize one's diet and bring us back to our ancestors plant based eating habits which I thought was really interesting because now Mexican and Chicano diets consist of mostly meat and its important to shed light that it wasn't always that way.