Kiara David

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

A Fragmented Ego

My final year project titled “A Fragmented Ego” explores my personal struggle with Body Dysmorphic Disorder. The definition of Body Dysmorphia is “A mental illness involving an obsessive preoccupation with the shape or size of a specific part of the body, sometimes considered an ‘Imagined Ugliness’. 

The thrust of my Dysmorphia stems from being overweight my whole life. I use many visual forms in my work, from photography, to collage and video to document my Dysmorphia. The guiding metaphor of my first photographic series is of being “not at home” in one’s body. In this photo series I began to photograph damaged walls/ cracks of houses to emphasize the feeling of a damaged sense of self. My second photo series focuses on the obscure/ distorted figure.

An important theoretical anchor for this series is Jacques Lacan’s theory of the ‘Mirror Stage’. I therefore use two types of mirrors in this series. The rectangular mirror is peeling away on the edges and acts as a metaphor, representing my dysmorphic image of my body. The other mirror attempts to introduce the theme of home, thereby activating an architectural trope which is intended to tie in with my overall theme of being not at home. Furthermore, I use collage and darkroom photography to highlight my struggle with extreme eczema which contributed to my negative body image. I also use video to give voice to eating disorders such as binge eating, which is brought upon by a society that is “toxic” towards fat bodies, that points a normative lens at such bodies and in so doing legitimized a toxic diet culture against such bodies. I have chosen the medium of black and white photography to foreground the documentary impulse of my project.