Haley Morris-Cafiero | Weight Bearing

Activist artist Haley Morris-Cafiero presents a newly-commissioned and highly personal series of self-portraits at Departure Lounge gallery this autumn.

Morris-Cafiero can be described as part performer, part artist, part provocateur and part spectator. Her work explores themes of body image, online bullying and societal expectations about female appearance.

In this new photographic series, Weight Bearing, Morris-Cafiero has responded to the alarming reports of increased requests for help with disordered eating during the Coronavirus lockdown by drawing on her own experience of living with an undiagnosed eating disorder, many years ago. In these new, constructed self-portraits Morris-Cafiero uses imagery and symbols from everyday situations to communicate the invisible feelings that she associates with trying to control her body’s size and conform to the wider society and the media’s expectations of what a woman should look like.

Haley Morris-Cafiero’s photographs have been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, and have been featured in numerous newspapers, magazines and online. Born in Atlanta, USA she is a graduate of the University of North Florida, where she earned a BA in Photography and a BFA in Ceramics in 1999. Nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2014 and a 2016 Fulbright finalist, Morris-Cafiero holds a MFA from the University of Arizona in Art. The Magenta Foundation published her monograph, The Watchers, in 2015. She is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Northampton.

Senior Portrait, 2021