It’s 7PM. You and your family are eating dinner while the news is on the TV. The station shares the latest report on the study of “the war on obesity”. The images shown while hearing about these studies are usually people with fat bodies walking through a sea of people in an over-crowded setting or a fat person eating. Modern media and news outlets are responsible for taking a simple, necessary task and turning it into a spectacle based on the type of body performing the act.

In I’m Ready for My Close-Up, the viewer enters a space with Kleinhans seated at a table, eating a full meal. There is a screen that provides live, close-up footage of their mouth with sounds from their eating being amplified through a personal microphone and speaker. Creating hyper-focus and attention to this event echoes the heightened levels of self-awareness some experience when eating around others. Viewers are invited to experience this spectacle off-screen and in-person to provide a moment of reflection and confront their own guilts related to the act of eating, especially in a public setting.

Miami, FL 2021

Pittsburgh, PA 2023