Demystifying ‘dolls’ - I

A new group exhibition at Bangalore's Gallery Sumukha features 12 artists who have created works on the tender world of children and their fascination for dolls in a broader socio-historical context.

Entitled ‘Dolls’, the show has been curated by Marta Jakimowicz who mentions in an accompanying essay: “Our environment seems to abound in all kinds of doll-like representations of people, from toys to schematic or infantilized images in book illustrations, comic strips, animated films, computer games, advertising and graphic design, through which we tend to perceive and handle relationships with others. The phenomenon being commonplace, we seldom question its character, role and origin.

Since childhood we carry the notion of the doll as a human baby, although in various circumstances it may partly assume different manifestations along with their emotive and referential content. Why do we need this intermediary that persists, if embodied in various forms throughout history?” the curator asks.

The classic doll as we know it presently, even if it has not always been so, is the image of a newborn into whose passivity we hesitantly infuse qualities of living being. This image epitomizes the mother’s instinctive, protective tenderness. Children internalize the mother’s feelings and actions by imitating her behavior towards their toys. Acquiring domestic and social skills, they in an intimate osmosis with dolls, absorb their passivity and malleability.

Ours is an era that recognizes and respects the innate nature of the child with its autonomy and individuality, as we, in particular artists, cherish and preserve in us its innocence and the powerful freshness of its first discoveries. On the other hand, the prevailing worship of youth contains both a positive and distorting or dangerous potential. The fulfillment of kindly love may turn into surrogacy that compensates loneliness.

The passive child-doll may also lend itself to psychotic grownup revenge whose roots go back to the earliest deprivations and endured cruelties. Its image mediates layered, confusing trajectories while adult qualities are superimposed on it and grownups appropriate its spirit.

(Information courtesy: Gallery Sumukha)