Big Girl Wanna Play Too | Gina Alexandra Denton
Big Girl Wanna Play Too, Gina Alexandra Denton (Baltimore, MD).
Baltimore Goes Elsewhere. August 2017. Installation view. Found fabric, bicycle wheel, PVC pipe, casters, poly fill.
Big Girl Wanna Play Too is a collection of modular, playable plush pieces. Denton created her interactive sculpture and accompanying jewelry forms as a reaction to the frustrations of being a larger-bodied woman in a culture that diminishes women both figuratively and literally, valuing thinness as the highest expression of feminine beauty.
A vague self-portrait, Denton’s bright, looming plush form holds court in the Transformatorium. Resembling a toddler’s toy, the piece is made from an array of tactile fabrics from the Elsewhere collection. Stacking rings make up the body of the sculpture that can be removed to wear around arms, legs, heads, and waists as decorative body extensions or an abstract fat suit. How does one interact with the wardrobe with five extra inches around one’s waist/arms/legs?
Having trouble finding clothing that would fit her in the Elsewhere Collection, Denton created a line of plush, fat jewelry using fabric scraps from her stacking sculpture. Through shape and form, these works subvert western notions of jewelry as delicate and precious, speaking subtly to the concept of fatness as a social stigma while existing as beautiful couture pieces. Denton invites viewers—of all sizes—to wear her work.
