Miss Meatface marks 10th year with NYC show & memoir

MISS MEATFACE MARKS 10TH BIRTHDAY WITH NYC SHOW & MEMOIR

London-based artist Kat Toronto, originally from Vallejo, California, is currently celebrating the tenth birthday of Miss Meatface, her much admired fetish alter ego. Meatface’s self-portraits are characterised by masks, latex, corsets, kitch decor and, frequently in more recent times, the obedient company of her Meatmaid, gamely played by hubbie Garry Vanderhorne, founder of Resistance Gallery and Lucha Britannia.

Fortuitously, Meatfaces’s tenth birthday happens to coincide with the tenth anniversary of New York art gallery The Untitled Space, which has represented her work since 2018. The gallery, located in Manhattan’s Tribeca district, is celebrating its first decade, in collaboration with @art4equality, with an exhibition called Uprise 2025: The Art of Resistance. It features the work of 100 artists exhibited by it over the past ten years — including Kat aka Meatface. The exhibition opened on March 8 to honour International Women’s Day and runs until March 29 to coincide with Women’s History Month.

Top image: Detail from ‘Bitch’ (aka ‘B!*&H’), one of three new Miss Meatface works by Kat Toronto in the ‘Uprise 2025: The Art of Resistance’ exhibition at NYC’s The Untitlted Space gallery (photo: Kat Toronto)

Featuring Miss Meatface: Full-length version (left) of ‘Bitch’; and (right), ‘Doll’ featuring hubbie Garry in the title role (photos: Kat Toronto)

Kat has three new Meatface works in the exhibition which we’re featuring here. Our top image shows a detail from the first of these, Bitch (or B!*&H, as it’s titled for social media purposes), in which a masked, flowery-hatted, latex-and-corset-clad Meatface can be seen holding a chain leash. In the full-length version of the same work (above left), it is revealed that the other end of the leash is attached to the collar of her faithful retainer, who is crouching on hands and knees behind the thighbooted legs of his mistress.

The second new image on show at the gallery (above right) is, for fairly obvious reasons, titled Doll. Here, Kat’s ever-dependable other half, this time enclosed from head to toe in tight, flesh-coloured latex, is positioned in front of his boss to play the part of a motionless male sex doll — alongside a trolley loaded with toys and kitch ephemara.

This collage by Kat Toronto, titled ‘Speak No Evil’, is the third piece in the trio of new MIss Meatface works on show at the NYC exhibition

The third new piece (above) is a bit of a departure from the more familiar Kat Toronto style in that it’s an ornately-framed, flower-bedecked collage. It features a central image of a black-clad Meatface with, behind her, her trusty minion in pink wrist cuffs and blindfold, his hands cupped over his mouth. Appropriately, the title of this one is Speak No Evil.

But her contribution to the NYC exhibition is only one of the ways the first decade of Miss Meatface’s existence is being marked. Posting earlier this week on Facebook, Kat Toronto said that to commemorate what is “a profound milestone” for her, she plans to share the story of how it all began, and where it has taken her. She’ll be doing this, she explains, one chapter at a time over the coming weeks — which we suspect will make interesting reading, especially for more recent followers who may not be aware of her full back story.

Two of the earliest Polaroid Spectra images depicting Kat’s Miss Meatface character from 2014 and 2015 (photos: Kat Toronto)

Below we’re reproducing the first chapter of her memoir, told in her own words, and accompanied by some of her earliest Miss Meatface  Polaroid Spectra photographs from 2014 and 2015. Look out for more in due course! She writes:

“In 2010 at the age of 29 I was diagnosed with a rare form of cervical cancer. I was married, and miserable. I was working a full time job that I didn’t hate but it didn’t fulfil me or my artistic passions. Through the cancer diagnosis I had found myself suddenly pushed into re-evaluating my entire life. Was I happy with the life I was currently living? Nope. I was depressed, coming home and drinking a bottle of wine every night and then staying up until three or four am working on art projects, then going back to work again at eight the next morning. I knew that I had to either change my life completely, or something very, very bad was going to happen.

Two more early Polaroid Spectra images depicting Kat’s Miss Meatface character from 2014 and 2015 (photos: Kat Toronto)

“By the end of 2014 into early 2015, I found myself revisiting photography, a medium I had always loved but often drifted away from. I’d explored other artistic expressions, but photography was a constant thread that I kept returning to. This time, however, something felt different. My self-portraits were no longer simply for fun; they became a lifeline — an urgent act of creation and self-preservation in order to pull myself from the edge of something far darker.

“The creature emerging from the Polaroids with blacked-out teeth, a bloody nose and vicious gaping wounds running across her face (I'd also taught myself the art of special effects make-up at this time) was not just a character. She was a reflection of what I’d been feeling inside, she was a raw expression of my internal disquiet. By spring of 2015 the creature in the photos had taken on a name: Miss Meatface.” (To be continued)

Kat Toronto, left, at the opening of an earlier exhibition of her work at The Untitled Space. Right: a small selection of the Miss Meatface work available via Big Cartel (link below)

missmeatface.com
missmeatface/instagram
missmeatface/bigcartel
luchabritannia.com
luchabritannia/instagram
untitled-space.com/uprise-2025
untitledspaceny/instagram