Sideshow

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on November 24, 2018 at 1:27pm

Curator’s Comments:

Sideshow caught my attention today, and holds me in the unsettling picture.  The nature of a sideshow is of course a macabre fascination with what is initially off-putting or extraordinary.  The large female figure on the left fits the bill, as the dark undulating folds in her dress are suggestive of rolling flesh underneath. While she could be sitting, her girth also appears to float within the picture plane; a surreal suspension of visual weight.  Her face, replaced with the simple word ‘eat’ suggests the entirety of her being, or how she is perceived by the disapproving child.  She covers her mouth as she looks away, as if to stifle a gasp, or the entrance of food by association.  More subtle than the brightly striped red circus tents in the background, I’m also drawn to the insects below.  Gigantic in proportion to the human bodies, they are sinister in their psychological, if not biological associations. The thin black lines in their bodies visually fold into the buried text layered in the college, as if to underscore their meaning.