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Jayden Dukes was born in Roseburg, Oregon. In the year 2019, she received her Associates of Arts Oregon Transfer (AAOT) degree from Umpqua Community College. She will receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Oregon State University in 2022. Dukes has been included in various exhibitions including It’s Not You It’s Me at Umpqua Valley Arts Association and Montage Juried Show at Oregon State University. In 2021, she was a curator for an exhibition called A Watched Pot Always Boils for Umpqua Valley Arts Association.

I am interested in the implications of taking up space in societal systems that are prejudiced against specific types of Bodies. My work explores the consequences of the marginalization of fat Bodies. My practice uses research and personal experiences as a fat, queer person to create artwork that explores and focuses on fat liberation and combating fatphobia. I make work about the Body, fatness, and identity as it pertains to the development, exploration, and practice of sexuality. 

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Through my artistic practice, I aim to create work about the fat identity and its relationship with queerness and sexuality. I create conversations about the ways in which fatness, queerness, and sexuality intersect in ways that are positive: the beauty in fatness through the documentation of the fat Body’s texture, shape, and color, and the beauty found through the acts of love done to and from fat Bodies. I attempt to tackle the negative aspects of living in a fat Body: the demonization and fetishization of fat Bodies, fatphobia in academia, discrimination in the workforce, medical, and fashion industries, marginalization in interpersonal relationships, and internalized fatphobia. 

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Through the discovery of various mediums–constructed photography, installation, poly-fil, nylon, rope, plaster, barbed wire–I make artwork to reconceptualize the ways in which we interact with fatness. In the interest of taking up space, my work explores the image, representation, and concept of the Body in an attempt to answer the question of what or why the Body is, the differences in Bodies, and how to help Bodies that face continuous discrimination.

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