Maria Cazzato

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 2026, Studio Art, Political Philosophy

Bathroom Penance

oil, acrylic, crackle paste, and glass beads on canvas

36″ x 40″

2023

This piece visualizes the experience of internalized fatphobia. The text, carved into the thighs, reads “The body is hazard to the soul, able to demolish the hardest won spiritual gains merely through ingesting the wrong material” from R. Marie Griffith, a celebrated scholar in the growing academic field of fat studies. My work is centered around the theory that one’s body is a spiritual place upon which rituals, worship, and damnation take place. The text, in combination with the praying hands, evokes religious imagery that challenges thinness, not just as a beauty standard, but as an ethical standard.

@maria.cazzato.art

Maria Cazzato

St. Agatha’s Breasts Dissected

Inspired by: Mixteca-Puebla Artist, Tripod Bowl Justin Walker, Daddy Bruce

hand carved basswood bowls, oil on wood, gold, table sugar

9″ x 9″ x 16″

2024

This piece is an interpretation of the story of St. Agatha, a venerated Christian martyr whose breasts were famously ripped off with tongs. Recasting her breasts as bowls of sugar questions the female body as a vessel of martyrdom. This sculpture situates martyrdom in a contemporary context by examining how women are forced to utilize pain to access salvation. By transforming the breast into a vessel for food, the sculpture portrays self-consumption as a form of penance and considers womanhood as a state of cannibalistic devotion. The female body becomes a holy vessel to be dissected, consumed, and torn apart.

@maria.cazzato.art