Just launched – the Kickstarter campaign for ‘Miss Meatface’ the debut monograph by performance-based photographic artist Miss Meatface – aka Kat Toronto. Officially launched on Valentine’s Day, the Miss Meatface Kickstarter campaign runs for 30 days during which Toronto’s London-based publisher Circa Press aims to raise £20,000 for the printing of the book.
artsy.net/artist/kat-toronto-miss-meatface
Originally hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area but now calling London her home, Kat is a multidisciplinary artist that works in performance based photography primarily utilizing vintage Polaroid cameras. She uses her often unsettling and surreal images to explore cultural ideals of feminine beauty and gender roles. Diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer in 2010, which eventually led to a full hysterectomy, Kat uses Miss Meatface as an artistic catalyst to delve into a complex set of questions about where she now fits into society as a woman.
‘Miss Meatface began in mid-2014 as an artistically therapeutic outlet for me while I was going through a particularly traumatic period in my life: a year before I’d undergone a total hysterectomy for cervical cancer and my marriage was ending. The surgery left me confused and conflicted. Long after my body had physically healed my mind was still reeling from the experience. So I began using photography – self portraiture in particular – as a way to explore concepts of sexuality, feminine beauty, and gender roles in an effort to try and dissect all of these complex thoughts that had been riddling my mind.’ – Kat Toronto
Wearing masks and dressing in fetish wear is a joyous process for Toronto, as it liberates her from the restraints set on her physical body by a society obsessed with defining and policing gender. In her Miss Meatface self-portraiture, Toronto stages fetishized domestic scenes that play with dominance and submission – games of power that mirror heterosexual power hierarchies – while her sexually ambiguous figures subvert conventional standards of beauty, gender, and power. ‘In the world of Miss Meatface’, she says, ‘the role of homemaker is not the stereotypical ideal of feminine domestic submission, it is one of ultimate control over her domain.’
This book, Kat Toronto’s first large-scale publication, brings together scenes from Miss Meatface’s life over the past seven years, drawn from locations in the US and UK.
‘In the beginning, I experimented with special effects makeup and took self-portraits with a Polaroid camera. That’s where the Meatface thing came from. Then gradually, as I explored my relationship with the fetish community and reflected on my personal history, Miss Meatface began to evolve. It’s interesting, how with the twists and turns that my life takes, she just kind of goes with it and reveals something new to me every time.’ – Kat Toronto
MISS MEATFACE will be produced in a hardcover format, with an introduction by Dominic Johnson, Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey, and The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art.
Format – 25 x 20cm (10 x 8 in)
288 pages
Approx. 170 colour images
Printed on fine art paper by one of Europe’s leading presses
First edition of 1,000 signed and numbered copies, plus special boxed editions and an exclusive Patron’s Edition
Books will ship in July 2022 from distribution centres in Italy*, the UK and US
Kat Toronto, aka “Miss Meatface”
Link to Kickstarter campaign
Miss Meatface @ Circa Press
