BUTTERFACE

Butter Body Politic (Butterface) from Jessica Posner on Vimeo.

BUTTERFACE
2014-ongoing
Live Performance with Butter

Video Shot by Maricruz Alarcon at Panoply Performance Lab, 2014.
The term “Butterface” is a derogatory term referring to a woman with a hot body, but an ugly face. As in: “She has a hot body, but her face…” As a fat, pretty woman, Posner has always been told she has a pretty face. When she began asking her friends if they also received this “compliment,” all of her fat friends had (but none of her thin friends).

In this approximately 40 minute live performance, Posner sculpts ten pounds of butter onto her head, rendering a butterface to match her butter body. She becomes a butter monster.

Posner continues to perform this work live. The video has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including “Body As…,” PULSE PLAY, PULSE Miami Beach; “Queering Space” traveling exhibition (originally from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT); “NASTY WOMAN,” Knockdown Center, New York; “Seen and Heard,” Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; “Loud Silence: Expressions of Activism,” The Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes Barre, PA; and “Embodied,” Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University.