Exorcising America: Mouth Exercises, Merritt Johnson

Merritt Johnson’s ongoing video series Exorcising America exposes a range of issues facing Indigenous people. In Mouth Exercises, Johnson consumes an ice cream cone while commenting on the many forms of systemic abuse enacted on the bodies of Native people, including health disparities such as diabetes and heart disease. To foreground the ideas she’s communicating rather than the aesthetics of the work, she deliberately adopts the accessible DIY style of instructional YouTube videos. Although Johnson’s initially suggestive style of eating subtly references the sexualization and objectification of women (another common theme in her work), she soon begins spitting out the sweet dessert, pointing out the dangers of silence in the face of systemic bodily oppression.