first four images from Babes In Toyland album covers and music videos featuring the artwork and rare appearance of Cindy Sherman; 3 images by Cindy Sherman; last two images by Hans Bellmer
Catholic Discipline - Barbie Doll Lust (Decline of Western Civilization: The Punk Years)
Bellmer Dolls - Lipstick (Automation)
Sacral Nerves - Trappings
Boris Dzaneck - Theatre Of Dolls (In His Own Words)
Ceramic Hello - Footsteps In The Fog (The Absence Of A Canary)
Moral - Dance Of The DollsÂ
Dmitri Shostakovich -Â Dance of the Dolls [Lyric Waltz for Violin and Orchestra] Â (Echoes of Time by Lisa Batiashvili, Bavarian Radio Symphony)
France Gall - PoupĂ©e de cire, poupĂ©e de sonÂ
CUPCAKE DUCTAPE - Recipe for Disaster (Get Over It)
Charles Gounod - Funeral March of a Marionette (Hitchcock Presents)
Frank De Vol -Â I've written a Letter to Daddy performed by Betty Davis (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane s/t)
Babes In Toyland - Istigkeit (Painkillers)
Lisa Germano - Sexy Little Girl Princess (Geek The Girl)
White Lung - Those Girls (Sorry)
Tonight’s episode of Imaginary Landscapes animates the secret lives of dolls: worry dolls, dammit dolls, barbies, mannequins, blow up dolls, paper cut outs, puppets, medical dummies, rag dolls, porcelain, plastic, vinyl, cloth bodies, dream girls, perfect, discarded. doll forms distorted and dismembered, melting chocolate dolls. the doll as fetish object in the case of the reassembled pubescent doll sculptures by German surrealist Hans Bellmer. These objects become sites of trauma, of beauty standards and homogenization, dolls remade under a nazi regime containing everything that is corrupted and taboo. standing in for everything that is too difficult to express or acting out the impossibilities of reality. a play thing, dragged along. doll parts as abjection in the sculptures created and photographed by visual artist Cindy Sherman. Her paper dolls, versions of her selves coming to life. Her own body photographed as a life sized doll, her stare is glassy as she gazes back at the viewer.
dolls that become a part of the detritus of life over time, remaining in a house as a leftover from childhood, filling up boxes, on the floor with cobweb hair, lost barbie accessories swept up, old and nostalgic, part of a messy cluttered room. porcelain dolls made in our image absorb everything and become cracked under sunlight, dusty velvet dresses, hair falling off. funny wigs, peeled off eyelashes, standing behind glass cabinets scaring down visitors with their stares. clown dolls and porcelain masks contain the memories of a girl’s bedroom, ventriloquist dummies missing part of its jaw, a puppet whose neck is a stick, the tent of a fabric body coming loose is now a head on a stick.
dismembered and altered plastic dolls follow a girl coming of age or from falling into the hands of her bratty brother. Barbie’s hair turns into a jagged grid pattern across her skull after her hair is cropped, pins stick through her face, sharpies cut across her plastic body. She maintains a smile and remains quiet. sometimes she becomes punk or goth, she follows me everywhere. sometimes I lose her completely along the way.
how do we restore body image in face of all of the anxieties of our body getting older and larger, as the female body becomes sexualized and commodified, innocence lost, body as a site of violence and male fantasies. the sharpie scrawls maps and histories across barbie’s torso and legs.
I continue to collect my dolls, each one in a state of disarray from time and moving. these emblems of everything I hoped to become is in their long ringleted hair, perfect skin, dressed in frilly lace and satin dresses. or of everything I left behind, rejected. They are time capsules for a world that feels safe, in magic, make believe, simplicity, and antiquity. of an object that stands for identity, for negotiations around femininity, of a small person we were given to take care of, brush her hair and tell her our dreams and worries, and later something to talk at while reminiscing. And maybe one day I will pass these dolls on and hope they will become restored.
