Casey Holt

Artist Statement

With this body of work, I’ve explored the way that food acts as a throughline linking different aspects of my life. I often struggle to connect the many sides of who I am into one cohesive self concept because, as a better poet than me put it, I contain multitudes. I’m neurodivergent, mentally ill, physically ill, queer, and transgender. I’m a dancer, a writer, a widower, a terrible chef, and an avid punk music listener. These different aspects of myself clash and conflict, but by finding the common ground that food occupies in all of them, I can understand them more clearly as interconnected pieces of myself. My work uses mainly textiles to examine the role that food plays in these aspects of my life, whether it’s the quick meals I ate during my summers of drum corps or the peanuts I have to force down when I’m too depressed to eat. This work is highly personal and specific to my own life, but it invites tactile interaction, allowing viewers to touch the work and find their own ways of relating to it, whether their experiences are similar to or completely different from mine.