Note: This text is a more academic text as it was originally written as an Assignment for SOAS.
I recently visited London-based British-Malaysian-Chinese artist Caroline Wong’s solo presentation, titled Girls Who Devour, at the Saatchi Gallery, filling large-scale papers, linens, and small boards with oil pastels, acrylics, and layered textures. The artist is doing something that sounds simple but carries significant weight: she is showing women enjoying themselves without apology. The scenes are lush, saturated, and borderline excessive. Women feast. They linger. They take up space. For viewers attuned to how rarely this is permitted (aesthetically, socially, historically), the work lands with unexpected force. Wong’s art challenges traditional narratives about femininity and consumption, inviting a re-examination of how women (especially East Asian women) relate to pleasure and autonomy in contemporary culture. This presentation not only celebrates women’s appetites but also critiques societal norms that often restrict their enjoyment and self-expression, thus redefining pleasure as a form of empowerment.
The exhibition positions what its curator Sophie Guo calls “voracity as a feminist method.” Women who have long been positioned as consumable objects (of the male gaze, of desire, of domestic expectation) are recast here as desiring, consuming subjects. Appetite, long policed in women as a sign of moral or bodily excess, becomes a vehicle for reclaiming bodily autonomy. But appetite, as feminist theory and cultural studies remind us, is never politically neutral. Who gets to feast? Whose hunger is celebrated, and whose is pathologised? These questions become sharper when race enters the frame. Berger (1972, p. 47) argues that in European visual culture “men act and women appear,” and that women are conditioned to watch themselves being watched, a dynamic that structures not only how women are seen but how they learn to see themselves. This insight is foundational to understanding what Wong’s work is doing: her feasting women are emphatically not appearing for anyone. They are absorbed in one another, in the food, in the act of consuming. Berger further observes that the surveyed female subject becomes simultaneously “the surveyor and the surveyed” (Berger, 1972, p. 46), internalising an external judgment that disciplines her behaviour and her appetite. The exhibition’s focus on voracity as reclamation echoes and reverses this dynamic, positioning appetite as a refusal of that internalised surveillance.
In her 2014 study, A Taste for Brown Sugar, cultural historian Mireille Miller-Young introduces the concept of “illicit eroticism” to describe how Black women, oppressed by race, gender, and class, have historically used their bodies and sexualities in informal and often stigmatised economic spaces for survival and mobility (Miller-Young, 2014, p. 182). Miller-Young argues that these women are not mere victims of exploitation; they are active social agents navigating alternative economies in pursuit of self-determination (Miller-Young, 2014, p. 183). This framework extends beyond the pornography industry, highlighting that pleasure and visible bodily enjoyment carry different stakes for women already coded by dominant culture as excessive or deviant. For such women, claiming the right to enjoy their bodies is not merely a personal act — it is a political one. Miller-Young introduces the concept of “erotic sovereignty” — the assertion of autonomous, self-defining pleasure that disrupts norms of gendered propriety and racial loyalty (Miller-Young, 2014, p. 202). This concept emphasises bodily self-governance against systems that have historically denied it. The performers she interviews face a distinctive double bind: dominant culture has already presumed them to be sexually available and immoderate, stripping them of the protections that respectability is supposed to offer. Rather than internalising this as shame, some mobilise it as a resource, staging their desires on their own terms (Miller-Young, 2014, pp. 200–203). Wong’s feasting women operate in an analogous register, transposed from sexual performance to the pleasures of communal eating and gathering. The act of consuming (embodied, excessive, shared) becomes comparable political terrain.
The question of whose pleasure is sanctioned is inevitably a racial one. Balogun (2022, p. 460), drawing on philosopher Charles Mills, posits that the global colonial economy operates on what Mills called a “racial contract” : an implicit structuring agreement that allocates the world’s resources, rights, and benefits unevenly along racial lines (Mills, 1997, p. 3). Balogun traces this to economic history, demonstrating how Eastern European trade networks indirectly supported the transatlantic slave economy in ways that have been largely erased from dominant historical narratives (Balogun, 2022, pp. 461–462). The broader implication, as Balogun (2022, p. 460) argues, is that the racial contract produces “connected geographies” of benefit and complicity that extend far beyond the obvious imperial centres. Crucially, Mills contends that “all whites are beneficiaries of the Contract” regardless of whether they are conscious signatories to it (Mills, 1997, p. 11), a claim that underlines how racial hierarchy is structural rather than individual.
This context is crucial to understanding Wong’s work in relation to her heritage and positionality. Her communal feasting scenes challenge Western ideals of feminine decorum, depicting pleasures that are messy, shared, and anarchic. In her art, women gather to eat together, rejecting the notion that pleasure must be a private, regulated affair. This aligns with the sociological concept of “homing,” as explored by Adebayo and Omololu (2020, p. 252), who illustrate how those facing structural exclusion must continuously reinvent their sense of belonging. Wong’s vibrant depictions of women around food create a temporary yet powerful sense of community, assembling a belonging that the broader world often denies. This sense of community is vital in challenging societal norms and fostering acceptance, as it allows marginalised voices to reclaim their narratives and assert their identities through shared experiences.
As a Turkish-British curator and part-time Food Anthropology student, I found myself profoundly implicated in Wong’s scenes of communal feasting in ways that exceeded aesthetic appreciation. I have spent much of my life navigating the discomfort of categorisation, exoticised on one hand, yet rendered ambiguous by the fact that I am white-passing on the other. This in-between position recalls what Abu-Lughod (1991, p. 137) calls the “halfie” — the anthropologist, or indeed the person, who inhabits the border between cultures rather than belonging straightforwardly to either, and whose very presence unsettles the assumption that identity can be cleanly located. Pleasure, for someone occupying that borderline, is never uncomplicated. It arrives laden with societal restrictions and inherited stigmas that must be consciously recognised and slowly unlearned. This personal awareness and reckoning sharpens a question that Wong’s work also poses: is pleasure (particularly the political pleasure her feasting scenes stage) universally accessible, or is it unevenly distributed along lines of race, class, and gender? Miller-Young’s research suggests the latter. The women she interviews pursue pleasure within contexts defined by structural inequality: limited formal employment, racialised wage disparities, and the constant demand to conform to standards of desirability shaped by and for white femininity (Miller-Young, 2014, pp. 193–195). The freedom to indulge, to be recognised as a desiring subject rather than a consumable object, is not equally available — it requires, at minimum, a level of material security that allows for more than mere survival.
Contemporary wellness culture exemplifies this issue. While it presents an invitation to embodied pleasure through practices like sound healing and slow living, access is still governed by the same racial and economic hierarchies that pervade society. Whose pleasure is commodified and sold at prices that exclude many? Whose cultural practices are appropriated for wealthier consumers without acknowledgment of their origins? In wellness spaces, cultural appropriation is not a mere distraction from the politics of pleasure; it is central to the conversation. Wong’s work navigates these tensions, portraying pleasure as a complex negotiation—one that occurs in bodies with histories and in spaces that are never entirely safe.
In conclusion, the exploration of Caroline Wong’s artistic practice through the lens of appetite, race, and the politics of pleasure reveals a profound intersectionality that challenges conventional narratives surrounding femininity and consumption. By integrating insights from scholars like John Berger, Mireille Miller-Young, and Dr. Bolaji Balogun, we gain a deeper understanding of how Wong’s work not only celebrates women’s autonomy and pleasure but also critiques the societal norms that often confine them. Berger’s analysis of the male gaze and the objectification of women resonates with Wong’s depiction of women as active participants in their own enjoyment, thereby reclaiming their identities as desiring subjects. Miller-Young’s concept of “erotic sovereignty” further enriches this dialogue, highlighting the political significance of bodily autonomy and pleasure, particularly for women marginalised by race and class.
Moreover, Balogun’s insights into the racial contract illuminate the disparities in access to pleasure and the ways in which societal structures shape our understanding of beauty and desirability. Wong’s communal feasting scenes serve as a powerful counter-narrative to these limitations, fostering a sense of belonging and shared joy that challenges the dominant aesthetic of feminine restraint. Ultimately, the critical dialogue established between Wong’s art and these theoretical frameworks underscores the necessity of an intersectional approach to understanding pleasure, identity, and consumption. By navigating these complexities, Wong not only enriches the conversation around women’s bodies and desires but also invites us to reconsider the broader implications of who gets to feast and whose pleasures are celebrated in contemporary culture.
Girls Who Devour by Caroline Wong at Saatchi Gallery can be visited until the 6th of May, for more information check their website.
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (1991) ‘Writing against culture’, in Fox, R.G. (ed.) Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 137–162.
Adebayo, K.O. and Omololu, F.O. (2020) ‘”Everywhere is home”: The paradox of “homing” and child upbringing among Nigerian-Chinese families in Guangzhou city’, International Sociology, 35(3), pp. 241–259.
Balogun, B. (2022) ‘Eastern Europe: The “other” geographies in the colonial global economy’, Area, 54, pp. 460–467.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.
Miller-Young, M. (2014) A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mills, C.W. (1997) The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.