Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Claire Heidinger

Defecating Deity

My artistic practice challenges and reclaims stereotypes of Chinese women and their sexuality by interrogating fetishism fuelled by the gaze. This is supplemented by an investigation into diasporic culture. Oil paintings and organic matter sculpture - rooted in identity, help redefine visions of postcolonialism, through the confrontation of victimization with an unwavering stare - defiant and unafraid. The translation and imitation of the patterns on porcelain have been recreated on the surface of biodegradable food products. Imitating memorialized designs hold a rich cultural history on organic objects which will change shape after a few weeks. Organic objects that represent bodies and hold imprints of distorted diasporas. Like the Vanitas and Memento mori, these objects will eventually wither and rot, rejecting its polished beauty, and transforming into decay and disgust. Similarly, Caravaggio painted Basket of Fruit (1599) and Young Sick Bacchus (1593), sick bodies and rotting fruit, succumbed to worms and insects. At present, lemon, ginger, bok choy, bell pepper, and eggplant, have been gessoed and painted in acrylic, mimicking the patterns found on its porcelain counterparts. The history of cross-cultural trade of ceramics and appropriation by the Dutch and other European rulers, led to chinoiserie becoming the popular fashion. Simultaneously migrants from these same cultures leave their homelands and build new diasporic futures in unfamiliar lands. Generations of lost connections informed the evolutions of these changes over time. We are the fruit, grown and harvested from our ancestral vines, nourished by the water and sun of the resilient spirit that lives within us. My work, Defecating Deity, shamelessly excretes an intimate, vulnerable, and grotesque depiction of loss through sexuality and beauty, alongside the porcelain organic produce. Our bodies remain resilient, but have been transformed by the violence and effects of colonialism, withering with each generation to come, and depleting itself back into our colonial landfill.