ARTIST STATEMENT

Growing up in a latine household, food has always been an integral part of my life. Food has been a way to show love and appreciation to my community- to my family. Although my personal relationship with food has always been a fulfilling one, societal pressures force me to question that relationship as a fat person. In conflating food with love, I now realize an excess of food is a projection of my own desire for love which is so often denied to fat bodies. Fatness and food are inextricably linked. My latine heritage and the community fostering that food provides, conflicts with the self-imposed restriction so often expected of fat bodies. My work exemplifies the unseen labor and sexuality of fat, latine bodies like mine.

BIO

Jacq Garcia is a queer, nonbinary, latine multi-disciplinary artist and curator whose work explores the intersections of community, fatness, food, and sexuality. They received their BFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston Clear Lake and their MFA in Printmaking at Ohio University. Their work has been shown both nationally and internationally including in ELLIO Fine Art in Houston, Texas, Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, Ohio, KINK Contemporary in Cleveland, Ohio, and University of Sharjah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

They organize Fat Print- a yearly print exchange portfolio with a varying theme exclusively for fat artists by fat artists.

They are the founder of Fat Artist Network, a non-profit organization that serves as a resource to find information on fat art, fat artists, fat art lectures, fat artist talks, and connect fat artists to each other.

They currently work as an Adjunct Professor at San Jacinto Community College and as an Exhibitions Assistant at DiverseWorks.

photo credit Annie Eversz