Selina Román doesn’t fit in the frame of her self portraits. And she’s not trying to.
In a new installation, “Abstract Corpulence,” the Tampa native and Ringling College photography professor known for delightfully uncomfortable work, turns the lens inward, using her own plus-sized body as both subject and medium.
At the B. Claire Rusen Gallery, the exhibition opened Aug. 31 blends photography, self-portraiture, and installation into a dreamlike exploration of form, vulnerability, and power.
Wearing pastel bodysuits and tights, Román twists and contorts herself into tightly cropped compositions that dissolve the figure into undulating landscapes and sculptural abstractions. Some are standalone images, while others are layered into long, abstract collages.
“This is what I want people to feel: that bigness isn’t a flaw. It’s a presence,” Román explains in a release.
The installation pushes back against conventional beauty narratives while embracing what Román calls the “absolute bigness” of her body. Sarasota Art Museum senior curator Rangsook Yoon describes the work as “an unapologetic embrace” of size and form, infused with humor, defiance, and critical play with popular culture.
Román, who has long photographed other women in staged portraits, avoided self-portraiture until now. She was inspired by Shoog McDaniel, a Tallahassee photographer whose work often uses natural settings like Florida springs to showcase fellow fat, queer bodies.
“I just felt like ‘Wow, it’s a body similar to mine. I find it beautiful. Why can’t I feel that way about my own body?” Roman told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “I could appreciate other fat bodies. I just couldn’t … I wasn’t giving myself the same grace as them. And so that realization made me question myself, like, ‘OK, why do you feel this way?’”
She started experimenting with self-portraits, but found herself trying to hide her body. It wasn’t until she saw herself through someone else’s lens—a 2019 role in Kalup Linzy’s web series “As Da Art World Might Turn”—that she started to push herself further.
“I still was a big person, but I didn’t mind that I was this big person in front of the camera,” Roman told CL. “I was becoming OK with it, and then I just started buying props and tights and experimenting in the studio.”
Once she was comfortable getting into the frame, she pushed herself to go beyond it through composite collages that stretch across SMA’s walls.
“I was thinking about those kinds of things where there is spillage, or where our bodies extend,” Roman told CL. “And so I wanted to play with that idea even more in the museum.
That’s why the work is unframed, for example, and they start to become layered. It’s because I wanted to keep going…keep spilling over into the next image.”
It was important for her to use that “absolute bigness” to challenge how fat people are often shamed or punished for not fitting the standards of thinness in situations like public transportation or corporate marketing—despite the fact that most Americans aren’t represented in those standards.
Around 74% of U.S. adults are considered “overweight” or “obese,” per the National Library of Medicine. The average woman is a size 16-18 or XL-XXL, according to the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education.
“It’s just tiring and sad to see fat people be demonized,” Roman told CL. “As a fat person, often I would think, well, I’ll do that when I lose X amount of weight, or, like, these goals that were dependent on me losing weight. I started to think, ‘You’re just going to the beach.’ Like, I could just go to the beach now and not wait until I meet this certain criteria.”
The result is both deeply personal and communal, an intimate and expansive experience that invites viewers to consider their own relationship to size, presence, and beauty. And Roman isn’t done. She wants to continue the project with more poses and possibly some video.
“It’s definitely not over,” she added. “And I’ll still get in front of the camera. There’s some more things I want to explore.”
“Abstract Corpulence” runs through March 29 at the Sarasota Art Museum. The exhibit is included in the museum’s $20 admission. Students under 17, veterans, and Ringling College Students get in free.
9/29: Updated to add quotes from an interview with Roman.
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This article appears in Sept. 18-24, 2025.