Tailgate: Amber and Doll Performance Excerpt, 2007
2011
Amber Doll is abandoned in the center of multiple Chicago tailgate parties and left for participants to explore.
I commissioned the production of a life-like sex doll, a RealDoll, made of a posable PVC skeleton and silicone flesh, in my exact likeness. My doll, Amber Doll, began as a Styrofoam print-out of a digital scan of my head. Her face was then custom-sculpted and later combined with the doll manufacturer's existing, "Body #8" female doll mold. After completing, "The Making-Of Amber Doll" and "Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony" (both 2007), Amber Doll and I went on to disrupt wedding receptions, roller-skating rinks, football tailgating parties, theme parks, and adult industry conventions. In the resulting series, "To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll," ideas surrounding agency and objectification are questioned, as are ideas about the success or failure of negotiating power through one's own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects. My work with Amber Doll, herself a literal object, deals with such themes through an oftentimes-complicated feminist lens.
To view early Amber Doll Project "sketch" videos and other videos not included in this portfolio please visit my Vimeo Profile.
Read full Artist Statement for the Amber Doll Project. Download a PDF containing full Artist Statement and image inventory by clicking the Packet Download (PDF) tab above.
I commissioned the production of a life-like sex doll, a RealDoll, made of a posable PVC skeleton and silicone flesh, in my exact likeness. My doll, Amber Doll, began as a Styrofoam print-out of a digital scan of my head. Her face was then custom-sculpted and later combined with the doll manufacturer's existing, "Body #8" female doll mold. After completing, "The Making-Of Amber Doll" and "Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony" (both 2007), Amber Doll and I went on to disrupt wedding receptions, roller-skating rinks, football tailgating parties, theme parks, and adult industry conventions. In the resulting series, "To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll," ideas surrounding agency and objectification are questioned, as are ideas about the success or failure of negotiating power through one's own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects. My work with Amber Doll, herself a literal object, deals with such themes through an oftentimes-complicated feminist lens.
To view early Amber Doll Project "sketch" videos and other videos not included in this portfolio please visit my Vimeo Profile.
Read full Artist Statement for the Amber Doll Project. Download a PDF containing full Artist Statement and image inventory by clicking the Packet Download (PDF) tab above.
