I am used, sucked dry, made a husk by procreation. I was your dream, to be used as you wanted, no questions asked. And now, when I am even smaller, you love me more. You are infatuated with me, the tiny girl mummy, easy to dominate easy to idealise never seen as a person, always a dream.
But beware, while you think me dead inside, I am assembling crumbs of emotions, gather fragments of thoughts and set them together to resist/you.
This is the first time I worked with polymer clay. And I wanted to do it well, so an intense research was my first step. I was fascinated by all the amazing doll artists I saw on the net and at the same appalled that I fell for the big eye, translucent skin, near dead female gender representation which seems to dominate the doll making space. I felt ashamed that these stereotypes are still ingrained in my aesthetic appreciation and that at the same time I hated these „innocent“ dolls, which are not innocent at all but a projection screen for -I am not sure – perhaps society’s models of beauty, femaleness, desire and domination?
While I worked at the sculpture I envisioned all the thoughts this tiny being may have and which were in no way conforming its innocent „sleeping beauty“ vibes. To enhance this contradictions I gave the sculpture a headscarf which alludes to the costumes of „The Handmaid‘s Tale“ a series which is based on Maragaret Atwoods famous novel.
But one-woman resisting was in my eyes not enough, I saw a mass of seemingly sleeping/dead/zombified woman screaming out her thoughts. And so, the collage you can see was born. The heads of women - formed as death masks - are arranged as a flower bouquet. Multiplied they conquer the screen and invade the observers mind, hijacking feelings, and thoughts, fighting a silent battle.
How I made it
I started out with a wire construction coated with tin foil. The next layers are thin rolled out polymer clay. I than added step by step the facial features and added details. Last step was to form the headscarf and red ribbon.
I made a photo of the sculpture and a huge vase and erased the background (I used the the app scan thing, love it, but perhaps you all knew it already :-DD). Next step was reworking/drawing parts of the vase and sculpture give it the appearance of a bouquet. Last step and most time consuming was the rescaling, arranging and designing these single bouquets into a whirling design which sucks the viewers gaze inside the artwork.
Buy Polymore on nftschowroom. The artwork is made on Procreate on Ipadpro, 4457 x 4673 px, 29,5 MB. The artwork belongs to a series about the invisibility of women I am currently working on.
Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva or buy some of my digital artworks on NFT showroom.
