Amber Hawk Swanson
To Hold, Cake Cut To Violate, Tailgate Welcome To Have, Magic Kingdom To Hold, A Question To Violate, eXXXotica To Violate, Rollerrink To Violate, Tailgate Mouth To Hold, Wedding Portrait To Violate, Girls Gone Wild To Hold, Pinball To Hold, Bibbidi Bobbidi Makeover To Have, Christmas Rollerrink To Violate, Tailgate Walkway To Hold, Bibbidi Bobbidi (After) To Have, Rollerrink To Have, Cake Face To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll Installation Image To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll Installation Image To Have, To Hold, and To Violate, Amber and Doll: 7 Minute Compilation (Wedding Reception, Tailgate, Girls Gone Wild) Artist Profile on SexTV (Part One) Artist Profile on SexTV (Part Two)
In 2007, 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. Similar concerns emerge in my series, "The Feminism? Project" (2006). The script for each video in the series was generated from interviews with women across the state of Iowa on the subject of feminism.