In this collage series, I combine illustrations from vintage dollhouse books and found photographs of different types of love dolls taken by men for play or review purposes on online love doll forums. I aim to deconstruct these representations as a response to the fragmentation, objectification and caricaturization of the female body by the patriarchal/capitalist mentality and visual advertising culture. Doing so, I aim to create new representations that are metamorphosing, deformed, and fragmented with an attempt to reveal the marginalized, fetishized, interchangeable, commodified, controlled and disciplined state of and the culture around the female body. The stark contrast between the so called innocent, joyful world of dollhouses and the uncanny and absurd states of their Pygmalionesque artificial female inhabitants is a reflection on domestic life and issues around the female body.
The reason for my choice of working with found images is that I believe appropriation to be a very strong feminist strategy and a counter-hegemonic tactic. Even today, women artists all around the world are working within a creative structure that wasn’t built to accommodate them. I think that claiming the ownership of the female body through transforming the very pervasive male-defined tropes is radical, intelligent, effective and very important considering today's current political, economic and social climate.