The Starving Artist; Understanding The Significance of Eating Disorders Through Contemporary Art

The Starving Artist; Understanding The Significance of Eating Disorders Through Contemporary Art

This practice-led research explores the ways in which contemporary art can provide insights into the lived-in experience of artists with Eating Disorders. As an artist and activist, my research takes on an insider-researcher approach in addressing my own experience with Anorexia, Bulimia and Orthorexia. My personal experiences are informed by a diversity of contemporary artists that are not limited to American painter Jenny Saville British photographer Kiera Faber, and German artist Ivonne Thein, who engage with visual representations of Eating Disorders. The study makes explicit the complexities in understanding Eating Disorders as a mental health matter. While Eating Disorders are primarily associated with mental illness, I argue that they are often observed through external or ‘outsider’ experiences, with a representational emphasis on physical body symptoms. This issue is compounded by the media’s focus on aspirational body ideals relating to a ‘Culture of Thinness’.

My project addresses the potency of art creation while living in an unwell body and the ways in which art can contribute to medical and psychological perspectives regarding embodied Eating Disorder perspectives. My autoethnographic artworks consist of a 70% weighting of my study. The exegesis, with a 30% weighting, presents an interdisciplinary integration of key art and health literature to explore the ways in which artists’ lived-in experiences with Eating Disorders can visually communicate about the broader human condition and social values around health and wellbeing.

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