Life-Long Weight-Gaining is a fictional beauty award that celebrates what dominant culture devalues: fatness. Staged as a parody of a pageant, the work features a photograph and life-sized cutout of the artist, semi-nude, one foot on several bathroom scales, gripping her belly fat beneath a sash that reads Life-Long Weight-Gaining. There is no audience, no competition – just one body alone in the bathroom mirror, both absurd and heroic. Created in 2013, at a time when the artist had no language for fat acceptance or body positivity, the piece reflects a deeply personal, alienated self-perception shaped by societal shame.umorous 1888 cartoon mocking the confusion: “I put in three Kreuzer and got no chocolate!”

The accompanying video trailer features a fat cat and a squirrel chatting: “Wow, you’ve really gained weight.” The other responds proudly: “I worked hard on this.” With dry, subversive humor, it undercuts the moralism of self-discipline and exposes the absurdity of diet culture.

In the 3,5hrs live performance, the artist stood naked on a chocolate scale, her body painted to resemble a hollow cast, complete with a visible seam. The chocolate slowly melted under her weight and body heat until she eventually slid off. Some visitors initially mistook her for a sculpture at first, highlighting the blurred lines between object and subject, image and flesh.

Performance without words (3,5hrs), exhibition and artist talk, shown at
- Neuer Kunstverein Wien (AT), 2013