Vicious Dolls
The best is yet to come，2023
Photography, CPU chips
80 x 53cm
The "Barbie Series" is a photographic journey that traverses the complex terrain of censorship, sexuality, and the iconography of the Barbie doll. My work employs a direct approach to the logic of the Chinese internet platforms where paradoxically, a Barbie doll, inherently devoid of sexual organs, can be censored for nudity. By applying the same principles of censorship to Barbie that are used for humans, I recontextualize her image, allowing her re-entry into the digital arena from which she was once barred.
I employ censorship tactics with a twist: slogans are placed across the chest, or an ever-decreasing cascade of Barbie images covers the breasts until they become indiscernible. This act of pixelation is not just a satirical jab at the absurdity of censorship but also a profound commentary on the objectification and fragmentation of the female form.
The series employs a distinctive method of censorship, a commentary on the fragmented female identity in the digital age. The mosaics adorning the dolls are meticulously hand-cut and dyed slices of discarded, recycled CPUs—a metaphor for the technological lens through which we view and judge the female body. The choice of material is deliberate: it symbolizes the repurposing of what was once central to computation and information processing into a means of covering and revealing. The CPUs, once the brain of our digital interactions, now serve a new purpose: they complicate the narrative of censorship by introducing a layer of industrial complexity to the organic curves of the Barbie form.
In the piece "Virgo," the image is set against a backdrop of a blue-purple night sky, a canvas of twinkling stars. However, upon closer inspection, these celestial bodies are countless layered, naked Barbie dolls, the stars marking where nipples and genitalia would be if they existed. Here, the anger is palpable, yet it is the sorrow that takes center stage; as the multitude of women's bodies overlap and blur into one another, the tragedy of their depersonalization is magnified.
These stars are not mere instruments of censorship; they also signify the prurient gaze of the voyeur, highlighting the objectified points that draw the eye. Through this series, I aim to spotlight the voyeuristic nature of society's consumption of female bodies, the commodification of women's privacy, and the absurdity of censorship. The series stands as a bold statement against the reduction of female identity to mere physicality, questioning where the line between art and objectification truly lies. The work is an invitation to reflect on the irony of modesty in a consumerist culture that simultaneously sexualizes and censors the female form.
Vergo, 2023
Acrylic board, archival inkjet print, mounted on aluminum
130 x 97cm
Acrylic board, archival inkjet print, mounted on aluminum
130 x 97cm
In the work "Infinite Jest," I present a visual loop where naked dolls are covered by the images of themselves, confronting the absurdity of internet censorship. The work questions the boundaries of obscenity and the arbitrariness of censorship, revealing a poignant irony in the act of cloaking the inherently featureless.
Infinite Jest, 2023
Acrylic board, archival inkjet print, mounted on aluminum
88 x 80cm
Acrylic board, archival inkjet print, mounted on aluminum
88 x 80cm