tits on a silver platter 

By Natalie Sharpe

For my Humor in Visual Arts class, I made a piece entitled, “Tits on a Silver Platter.” This work is a response to Sarah Lucas's show, Au Naturel, in the New Museum. Sarah Lucas pushes us to look at the human body in ways that are outside traditional conventions of the female nude. I was interested in the abstraction of sexual parts away from the body, and how by removing the whole body as context, these parts feel more “crude” and sexually pointed. Inspired by Lucas's use of food as euphemisms, I created two large breasts out of butter cake, buttercream frosting, and pink fondant and set them on a “silver platter,” ready for consumption. The silver platter fits with other objects we are accustomed to seeing alongside a classic nude - plush curtains, sheets, a silver platter with a vase or cup. Instead of a full woman’s form beside the silver platter, in my work her parts are presented as the main dish on top of it. Breasts cut from a body, separated as two units, and presented as a kind of delicacy should also be understood as violent and disturbing. I asked my class to "charge" at the cake at once, as a kind of performative consumption of the female body. This was intended to challenge them by evoking both discomfort and satisfaction - the act of eating the body with hands, through a grabbing of flesh and groping, and then consuming it - is an implicit kind of abject, in its cannibalism and shamelessness. But as the “flesh” tastes sweet, with the nostalgic flavor of birthday cake, the consumption at once feels harmless.