Arielle Tesoriero makes work that is difficult to look away from and harder still to categorize. Cakes, flesh, the female body, coffee grounds pressed into resin until they resemble festering wounds, these are the materials and images of a practice that operates somewhere between desire and decomposition, between the decorative and the deeply uncomfortable. The titles alone signal the tone: irreverent, bodily, and precisely chosen. This is art that knows exactly what it is doing, even, when especially, when it unsettles.


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Do you trust your instincts when they lead you somewhere uncomfortable, or do you ever  censor yourself? 

Surprisingly, I do censor myself, but only with titling my work. I love ridiculous names, but I  know it can make people take the work less seriously. Some of my favorite titles I didn’t second  guess are: “Vixens of Veal Parmigiana Vocally Verify Their Meat Vajazzling,” “Breakfast  Bitch,” and “Perversion (Unicorn).” I also have some names I’ve been saving for a rainy day,  like “Slumber Party Scissor Sisters,” “Hormonal Huzzies,” and “My Burning Bush.” If you can’t  tell, I like names that sound like tongue twisters. 

Do you care if people misunderstand your work, or is misinterpretation part of the point? 

People sometimes think I’m making religious work, or that I’m “thinking like a man” by leaning  into the feminine aesthetic and specifically using cake imagery. This isn’t purposeful, but I think  it’s inevitable people will misunderstand me. Nobody truly knows what someone else is  thinking, and that’s the beauty of art making. I can’t control how people will react, so I should  make whatever I want regardless. 

What are the strangest or most unexpected materials, images, or ideas that have directly  fed into what you create? 

Recently, I’ve been using coffee grounds in acrylic gel pastes and resins. It creates the most  disturbing discolorations, like a festering wound. I’m not sure how it will decompose though. That’s something you have to think about when you are combining organic and artificial  materials. I’ve recently discovered the work of Anna Ting Möller, she uses fermented kombucha to create sculptures that look like rotting flesh piles. Since it’s bacteria and yeast, I think it does  rot, and that’s the point. I want to explore how I can incorporate a similar process in my own  work, maybe using real sugar or icing and watching how it decomposes. 

Has there been a point when your process felt obsessive or even destructive rather than  creative?  

I think it’s hard to be an artist without desire or obsession. Nothing else is going to give you the  willpower to spend your weekends doing something inherently pointless. You could be relaxing,  hanging out with your friends, or doing anything other than making random objects. Creation is both self-destructive and liberating. You get to live in a world that you control, but at the same  time, that world can be lonely and isolating. And yet I still wake up wanting to do it all over  again. 

Do you think your visual language risks being reduced to an aesthetic trend when it  circulates online? 

I would like to believe my imagery extends beyond that since cakes and the female body have  been represented and analyzed throughout history. But with today’s social media landscape,  anything can be reduced to a microtrend. 

Is “finishing” a piece real for you, or is it simply the moment it begins its life elsewhere? 

When I finish something, it’s meaning continually changes as I change, and I’m inspired all over  again. I’ve been making work about the body and food for almost 10 years. Every time I make a  new piece that has been inspired by a previous one, a new life has begun. Just like my work  changes for me, it changes for the viewer. My work is a culmination of every person who has looked at it.  

Can you share anything about what you’re working on next? 

I’m collaborating with a perfume house to make a custom scent based on my sculptures. It will  be a limited edition run, but I’m so incredibly excited because this is unlike anything I’ve done  before. This past year I’ve been super into perfume. I’m handpicking my favorite notes to find the perfect scent. Think something surreal, skin like, earthy but off kilter, sweet, and warm. Flesh  turned to cake, a body collapsing into itself, like a warm hug. I’m having a lot of fun writing the  description. It’s a whole experience.

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What emerges from this conversation is a portrait of an artist who has made peace with the unresolvable aspects of the work, the misinterpretations, the obsession, the loneliness of spending a weekend making something "inherently pointless," and then waking up the next day wanting to do it again. A custom perfume that smells like flesh turned to cake. Titles saved for a rainy day. Work whose meaning keeps shifting as both maker and viewer change over time. Arielle Tesoriero is building something cumulative, strange, and entirely its own, and it is nowhere near finished.