Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire
On Show 2020
Lana May Fleming

“That’s what you get for being food.” Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman. Edible women, seductresses who are in constant peril of being devoured. The manifestation of hunger, lust and desire.

To eat is to feel satisfied, to hunger is to seek satisfaction. This starving of desires often culminates in the personification of food. The primal want of fullness becomes intertwined with a primal searching for sexual satisfaction. The tantalising internet mogul co-exists with the stylized ‘food-porn’ that flaunts us on our instagram feeds. However, they do not ‘feed’, they leave us starved. Here a phenomenon of ‘food’ grooming exists; these ‘cyber Aphrodites’ productise their beauty, we eat it up. They work in a factory of sameness, which we strive to replicate. Mirrored in the food industry alike; grown to be appealing. They are the ugly carrots that Marks & Spencers won’t sell, as they are un-appetising. Like our dinner, we’re becoming GMOs.

In my work, using painted personas in performative video, I animate these symbolic chimeara’s of food products and productised women. The videos sit alongside sculptural components. The devices I create often replicate “selfie sticks”. These phallic photo rods are bodily and fleshy mounds which reflect a corporeal nature of the videos. The strawberry siren is my Frankenstein’s monster. She represents a lineage of female temptresses, such as Eve with the apple. Through recounting whispers, this temptress has written herself into existence as woman becomes fruit. Strawberry Siren is an imagined creation of beauty and wanting; appetising to her core. The strawberry form replaces the appropriated female body and identity, which are eradicated as she blurs the line between objectification and personification. In these actions we become the voyeur at the market, hungered and confused.

My work creates a blurriness of familiarity in re-imaginations of the mundane and fantastical. Embodying the Strawberry Siren creates a confrontation. It is art with an outward gaze and will meet the eyes that watch.