As a collaborator for National Eating Disorder Awareness week, I created an over eight-foot sculpture to bring the reality of an individual with an eating disorder’s lived experience, while offering hope. The inside of the closet depicted the intrusive thoughts of an eating disorder and obsession with numbers through weight scales, measuring tape, food with calories listed, and a with mat that had burned into it, "Welcome - Ana,” representing going inside an individual's mind with anorexia. The inside is lined with black trash bags representing a bulimic vomiting into a trash bag and an individual ending up in a body bag as they thrive for an unrealistic beauty standard. I then invite the public to share their stories of body image, eating disorders, and self-love through writing in marker directly on the outside of my installation. The compare and contrast between the installation’s interiors sad reality versus the external message of hope works to mimic how on the inside eating disorder warriors are facing a battle, meanwhile on the outside pretending that everything is okay.

Photographer - Annie Silverman