dollhouse: An Exhibition of Installation

Abstract

"dollhouse" is a dreamy, peachy, pretty little private space saturated with sickly sweetness. The installation consists of three rooms built inside the shell of a 1971 Airstream trailer, filled with objects, forms, and colors associated with conventional femininity. As a whole, "dollhouse" simultaneously asserts the value of this so-called “feminine” affinity for embellishment and color, and questions the ideals, assumptions, and expectations through which women and girls are jointly framed and perceived by society. In order to illuminate some of the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the work, this paper explores dollhouse through five interrelated sections: ambivalence, hyperfemininity, artifice, beauty, and sexuality.