With this piece I subvert expectations surrounding the body and representations of the body, as well as the space of the dinner table. As a place where people come together and speak, the dinner table has a particular political significance, as it is the most immediate foundation of civil society and democracy. The dinner table also acts as the primary site for low politics; it is a harbour for individual appetites as well as a social space, literally putting individual material interests in conversation and contestation with one another.

 

Referencing the Bakhtinian concept of the grotesque body, I focus on orifices as a pictorial foundation of carnival, another site of low pol- itics. I draw inspiration for the table cloth from Petronius’ Satyricon as well as Fellini’s film interpretation of the Satyricon. I choose to paint on untreated canvas as a reference to the motif of temporal flesh in these instances of grotesque art and literature. As the painting ages, the oil will eat through the raw canvas fibres.​