Maria Rosati’s MFA thesis show takes its name from the soft, unprotected belly of an animal, which suits a body of work that is about vulnerability.
Working from her own life and from the field of critical fat studies, Rosati looks at the shame people are taught to feel about their bodies, and at the old habit of treating fatness as a moral failing. She uses her own body as material and performer, and she builds the work through silkscreen prints, soft sculpture, textile craft and blunt text paired with images.
Some of it is meant to be uncomfortable. Rosati asks viewers to stay with that feeling gently instead of turning away. The aim is a little more empathy and forgiveness toward our own bodies, and other people’s.
Rosati trained at NSCAD before coming to the University of Alberta, where she is finishing her MFA in printmaking. Underbelly shares the gallery with Samantha McLeish’s She Did What She Could. That makes it a good double bill for anyone interested in textiles, printmaking and how women’s bodies get defined.