Soft Belly
by Sophia-Talya Transky

WIZO Haifa Academy of Design and Education, Israel
Graduation year: 2022

portfolio shortlisted call 'BLURRING THE LINES 2022', 2022

In my project, I create a series of photographed and scanned images on a home printer, and examine the medium of photography and its boundaries through dealing with different materials and connecting them in collage works . The works make up a kind of personal portraits, through photographing and dismantling the body as well as digital scans of the decay created on live objects. They range from esthetics to decay and disgust, simulating my sense towards myself. By assembling and dismantling myself and other objects, I examine their effects on me , as well as examine and present the effect on the family circumstances in which I grew up. In my family, the food business was central. It is directly related to our emotions, memory, and socio-economic status. My Grandmother’s mother was a very large woman who became ill due to obesity. The fear of being like that was ingrained in my grandmother and she passed it on the future generations. In time , I realized that the grotesque and large body had always piqued my interest. The large area form, the shedding layers, the folds, the curves and the connections between the parts of the body that resist caused me some discomfort, and at the same time, I seemed charged and burning. During the work, I realized that not only fat interests me, but body image and self- image as broader concepts. They raise question in me that bring me together with myself, with family and society , and confront me with the sources for creating the negative self-image. In my work I investigate the same dissonances while trying disassembling and reassembling. The body image and the self -image were shaken. Their virtues are not clear to me and they raise questions that drive the process of my work. During the work, I started combining sculptural work with the photographic work. The physical, three dimensional material expresses the anxiety and obsession that drives my self- search, repetitive and obsessive disassembly and assembly operations are the ones that motivate me to disassemble and reassemble my image from my intimate observation of the present, memories and emotions through dialogue with myself and the environment. Search for empathy and identification.


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