Hayley Chiu

Fat fat white white

肥肥白白。I depict myself in a surreal landscape as a place where traces of shame and embrace exist simultaneously. I reference Chinese New Year pictures populated with auspicious motifs of fat babies frolicking in the water, surrounded by red carp and lotus plants. Appropriating these images, I insert myself in place of that baby, my environment overgrown and my flesh glowing, spilling from my swimsuit. Numbers float around me with no particular trajectory and purpose as I remove their power, refusing to be quantified and bound by them. I was that fat baby that lived here and I would punish myself for it, not realizing that this place, this body, is my home.