Katia Rabey
'Flat Stomach' + 'Stress Eating 2019'
Flat Stomach
Wouldn’t you love to eat as much as you want and still be able to say you have a “flat stomach”? Easy – given the “Flat Stomach” is a title of jewelry you own.
This pendant mimics the shape of a stomach, the one we recognize from our anatomy textbooks and heartburn pill ads. It is roughly the size of an actual stomach, and when worn, it is placed right on top of the real one. But the cold steel texture and the cage-like pattern turn the soft organ into a kind of prison of dietary restrictions.
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Stress Eating 2019
The conceptual part of this pendant was in the works for nearly 2 years.
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When in the summer of 2018 I returned home from 5 years in Israel, at first I was euphoric: no language barrier, surrounded by old friends etc. But slowly I started feeling more and more down: old friends had new lives, my new skills seemed unneeded, the weather was unpleasant, so by the time winter came I found myself at a really low point.
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I found solace in junk food: emotional eating, stress-eating, over-eating – all of these became my close companions in the year 2019, so by the end of that year I was really shocked when online statistics of my bank account showed how much I spent in McDonalds. I was equally shocked when I realized how much weight I gained.
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WWJD? What Would Jeweler Do? I translated the sum I spent on junk food into grams of gold and cast a small pendant of the same weight. The entire year of stress-eating could be expressed by mere 5.43 grams of gold.
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It is interesting what had happened next: for the entire year 2020 I haven’t touched junk food at all, not even a little, because I didn’t want to ruin such a beautiful concept: a talisman against emotional eating. I lost 9 kilos by the way, but it’s not the point. What is the point, you ask? The power of conceptual jewelry, of course!

2020, stainless steel, cord, 13cm height, photographers Katia Rabey, Rafi Schoffman

2020, stainless steel, cord, 13cm height, photographers Katia Rabey, Rafi Schoffman

2020,14K gold, thread, 25mm height, photographers Katia Rabey, Arseniy Kuntesvich

2020, stainless steel, cord, 13cm height, photographers Katia Rabey, Rafi Schoffman
Flat Stomach, 2020, is available for sale: $270AUD
enquiries: tempcontemp@gmail.com