Maria Cazzato: Leg Room

An immersive installation of monumental paintings that leverages City Hall’s architecture to create dynamic sightlines for viewing the figure. As a figurative painter, Maria Cazzato is interested in the body as a vessel of sense-making. Our understanding of space is always relative to the body. These paintings both leverage and distort that relationship by exaggerating the scale of the legs to create a spatialized experience of the work. The verticality of these works overwhelms the viewer with both imagery and material. When suspended in the Mezzanine Gallery, the legs are recast as column- like structures capable of holding up space just as legs bear the weight of the body. Despite the centrality of the female nude in figurative painting, the fat female form remains a highly contested subject. Fatness is constantly feared, degraded, and erased. In a world that is increasingly fearful of and hostile to fatness, I use overwhelming corporeal detail to collapse the distance between viewer and body. The imposing scale and undeniable beauty of these images invite a range of responses from the diverse audiences who encounter them in City Hall. By using the landmark’s architecture as an armature, this work empowers the fat female form as a monumental site of strength, taking up space, bearing weight, and demanding to be seen.