Throughout history, depictions of women, like these figurines, have held the position of both subject and object. In my work, I reclaim the idea of “woman as object.” They remind me of my matriarchal lineage, my role as a woman living under the pressure of the patriarchy, and how I might use the female gaze to give them agency.
My multidisciplinary practice combines sculpture, photography and painting to explore the relationship between memory, domesticity, and the evocative power of objects. I begin with a treasure hunt for figurines that appear haunted, sad, pensive, sexual, or otherwise easy to anthropomorphize. To elucidate for the viewer what I see in the objects, I arrange them in theatrically lit scenes inside dollhouses, at times transforming them through paint, wax, or resin before photographing them. These photographs become the basis for my paintings, yielding a body of work comprising the resin casts, the photographs, and the paintings.
I cast resin sculptures from vintage porcelain figurines of women, androgynous figures, and children from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, a period in European and American culture which greatly informs contemporary Western biases, tropes, and attitudes regarding women. Some of the pieces show a kind of double portraiture, with additional figurines inserted into the wet resin casts. The resulting translucent sculptures host opaque originals within their bodies, metaphorical composites which can be interpreted as mother and child, the “true self" or "child self," parasitism, spiritual possession, or other complicated psychologies. And the varying levels of expression and presence in these painted faces create a wide range of appearance regarding cognizance and action: the figures on display in these narratives inhabit an uncanny valley between conscious agency and inanimate objectification.
I cast resin sculptures from vintage porcelain figurines of women, androgynous figures, and children from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, a period in European and American culture which greatly informs contemporary Western biases, tropes, and attitudes regarding women. Some of the pieces show a kind of double portraiture, with additional figurines inserted into the wet resin casts. The resulting translucent sculptures host opaque originals within their bodies, metaphorical composites which can be interpreted as mother and child, the “true self" or "child self," parasitism, spiritual possession, or other complicated psychologies. And the varying levels of expression and presence in these painted faces create a wide range of appearance regarding cognizance and action: the figures on display in these narratives inhabit an uncanny valley between conscious agency and inanimate objectification.