Fat Activism

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Cindy Baker, "Crash Pad (detail)," 2018

custom wallpaper, dimensions variable (image courtesy of the artist)

In the 1960s, as the feminist movement picked up momentum, women burned their bras to protest societal norms pressuring them to assume sexualized personas and conform to certain body shapes.

Another movement emerged around the same time: fat acceptance, also known as fat activism. Its defining moment came in New York in 1967 when some 500 women protested anti-fat bias by burning diet books.

Decades later, fat activism still has currency. Although the movement has changed, it continues to oppose discrimination against those with bodies outside mainstream beauty standards.

Cindy Baker, an interdisciplinary and performance artist who splits her time between Edmonton and Lethbridge, Alta., proudly calls herself a fat activist.

“Fat bodies are oppressed,” she says. “Fat is equated with unhealthiness, immorality, unproductiveness and unattractiveness.”

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Cindy Baker, "Crash Pad (detail)," 2018

watercolour drawing, 8.5” x 11” (photo courtesy The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, B.C.)

Baker, whose art has focused on the body for years, is known for critiquing how people are affected by the practices and assumptions of consumerism and late capitalism.

Her work is informed not only by fat activism, but also by gender culture, queer theory and other forms of critical inquiry.

Two separate, but related, bodies of Baker’s recent work, Crash Pad and Trucker Bombs, are on view until May 5 at The Reach, a public art gallery and museum in Abbotsford, B.C.

Crash Pad includes a video projection, a series of blue monochromatic drawings, and patterned wallpaper. All depict domestic intimacy between women who have, as Baker says, “bodies like mine.” Some also have disabilities or chronic health issues.

“These are socially taboo bodies that fail to meet the demands of consumer society,” Baker says. “I take the fat body and the disabled body and normalize them. It is not a freak show. These are people living their own lives. I want others to see that they are just trying to get comfortable.”

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Cindy Baker, "Trucker Bomb 12," 2014

digital photo transparency lightbox, 14” x 10” (image courtesy of the artist)

In contrast, no people are shown in Trucker Bombs. Rather, this series of 18 light-box installations depicts bottles of golden liquid set along highways. The exquisitely photographed containers, in fact, are filled with urine.

Baker’s work brings attention to long-haul truck drivers who don’t have time for bathroom breaks due to tight delivery timelines. Instead, they use empty juice or pop bottles and discard them out the window. In the industry, such bottles are nicknamed “trucker bombs.”

The practice is unwholesome, even harmful, says Baker. “Trucker Bombs is about having empathy for other bodies.” ■

Crash Pad andTrucker Bombs are on view at The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford, B.C., from Jan. 24 to May 6, 2019.