529 Voluminosa

Jacqueline Hayden’s 529 Voluminosa is a color-inverted close-up image of a female nude. The model is a member of the professional Cuban dance troupe Danza Voluminosa, whose members are dancers who gained weight, belying the notion that dancers must always be extremely thin. Founded in 1996, the dance group performs primarily in Havana. Hayden’s abstracted image is part of a series of prints called “Voluminosa” and was originally made in 2004 for use as a photographic projection for the theater performance Una Muerte Dulce (A Sweet Death). The series of images was presented as an alternative visual narrative to the death of the lead character who experienced rejection from her mother because she was fat. In her despair, she ate only sweets as a means to transform herself into a grotesque being, eventually eating herself to death.