Food Rooms

The question I chose to consider is “if you had to be a food based off your personality, what food would you be?” I was asked this question a few years ago by a child I was babysitting at the time.I found that this question never really left me. One because I think its answer is really telling about who a person is, and how they see themselves. Everyone likes food, it’s essential to living, it brings people together, it shapes our daily routines, and its likes and dislikes are unique for each individual. The second reason why this question stuck with me is because food is on my mind all day every day. I have struggled on and off my whole life with maintaining a healthy relationship with eating and keeping myself healthy. When I was asked this question, I found that I couldn’t really fathom a response, when most of my life I chose not to eat. More so, how could I define myself by something I often actively avoid. The final work that I created contains three rooms. Room 1 depicts an assortment of food scattered all over the floor, speaking to the ideas of food being all around us all the time. Room 2 presents two self portrait drawings hung on display. The final room contains an overwhelmingly large skeletal rib cage, from which it spills black jelly beans (the food the person who asked me that question decided I should be). The purpose of this sculpture is to function as a visual representation of the internal emptiness often felt throughout a majority of my life, that I have always struggled to explain.