In my series of hand-painted plates, Pretty Plates About Digestion, the viewer is invited to travel inward, into the inner workings of the human body and its remarkable process of digestion—the most integral part of eating. While the plate is an object from which we eat in our pre-digestive state, I have co-opted and adapted the traditional imagery of flora and fauna found on decorative plates, replacing it with the flora and fauna of the digestive system: organs, taste buds, saliva, and other biological forms. The plate is an icon of eating, and these motifs of digestive biology become signifiers of life itself. I have idealized and glorified the entire digestive process, commemorating and ornamenting its components in candy-coated colors.
Throughout this series, I play with convention both visually and conceptually, as I do in much of my work. This is reflected in titles such as A Pretty Taste-Bud Blossom, in which taste buds resemble a floral motif, and A Big Plate of Tongue, where the tongue occupies the entire surface of the plate. I enjoy manipulating conventions by making them so rudimentary and literal that they become absurd. This includes social conventions surrounding manners and the body: digestion is something one is not supposed to discuss while dining in polite company, much less display in plain view. By bringing these hidden processes to the surface and rendering them decorative, I transform what is typically considered private or impolite into something worthy of admiration and contemplation.
Copyright Notice: All photographs © Amanda Dumas-Hernandez. All rights reserved. No images may be reproduced, distributed, exhibited, or used in any form without the artist's prior written permission.
