
Giulia Essyad
“Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet!” yells Violet Beauregarde’s mother in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as Violet chews a stick of Willy Wonka’s magic gum. In an iPhone selfie printed on tarp (Off-Colors, 2020), on view in Giulia Essyad’s exhibition “Chocolate Factory,” the young Geneva-based artist depicts herself as Violet, her dark hair rippling like that of Botticelli’s Venus. Her skin is colored a purplish blue, her silhouette digitally accentuated. Referencing the iconography of “Violet fetish” kink (and sexualized obsession with body inflation), the gesture destabilizes