Barbie's Queer Accessories

I was incredibly excited to view the retrospective of the late Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery this week. Freud's scrutinising study of the body and human form has always been of strong influence to me and my work. Throughout the exhibition, I was incredibly curious as to the frequent use of animals in his portraits, almost as if to draw some kind of parallel; in his 'Naked Man With Rat' (1977-8), the tail of the rat in the right hand of the male sitter hangs close to his penis, suggesting perhaps that they are both simply a type of appendage. It is hinted here that 'Freud did not care about gender or ego; people were simply another species of animal' (National Portrait Gallery, 2012). These ideas led me to consider the importance of such biological and physical features such as genitalia in creating identity. Wanting to develop my earlier experimentation into the manipulation of the doll's body, I moulded my sculpted penis onto the body of the Barbie whose arms created the appendage. The use of paper mache, for me reminiscent of childhood crafts and television shows such as 'Art Attack', is highlighted by the use of metallic silver spray, heightening the awareness of texture, material and process. Inspired by the fragmented and distorted dolls of Hans Bellmer, I wanted to move away from the human like quality of the doll and create something separate, and almost alien. Here, the almost absurd sight of such a recognised cultural item with a penis forces us to question why we are willing to accept that this inanimate figure is female, despite her lack of vagina, hormones and reproductive system.

'Barbie's Queer Accessories' and details (2012) Barbie doll, paper mache, spray paint

Lynda Benglis

In Lynda Benglis' latest exhibition at the Thomas Dane gallery - her first UK retrospective - the artist employs a variety of media (wax, rubber, clay, bronze and glitter to name a few) to create forms as extensions of the body. I personally found the pieces shown across the gallery's two spaces to display a consideration of material process, managing to marry organic forms in a very unnatural way. Her works almost blur the line between painting and sculpture vividly coloured latex seems to ooze across the floor, while works such as her 'Sparkle Knot IV', right, appeared to me at initial glance to be constructed from torn and knotted canvas.

Entering the second gallery space, we are greeted with Benglis' video work 'Female Sensibility' (1973), below left, which shows the artist and a friend gently kissing. Through their knowledge of the camera, and hence the viewer, and sense of very controlled and constructed gestures, the women here elevate themselves above the status of objects, and as such perhaps escape the tyranny of the male gaze. Set to the soundtrack of an appropriated American radio station, punctuated by country music tracks, as described Aesthetica magazine, it is 'uncomfortably stereotypical in its

masculinity, made worse by the later introduction of a preacher sermonising on the creation of Adam and Eve.'

The press release claimed "Her defiant nature was exemplified by a mythical advertisement in the November 1974’s edition of ArtForum, in which she posed naked brandishing a dildo – satirising the machismo of the art world." In an interview concerning this collection, the artist herself claimed she was interested in showing 'that an artist can be both masculine and feminine. But most importantly, an artist is an artist.'For me, this work attempts to display masculinity and femininity simultaneously, perhaps displaying visually both having the phallus in a physical sense of the signifier, and being the phallus, through the female form of her exposed breasts and hips. Continuing my exploration into childhood toys, I recreated the pose of the photograph below, using my manipulated "drag king" Barbie as my "penis" (I was, coincidently, wearing an almost identical shirt); this experimentation allow me to begin to consider the function of the Barbie in a child's development of a sense of self. Which the little girl can identify with this image outside of herself, it is precisely this outside otherness which presents the child with a sense of the female body as object.Through editing, I was able to heighten the lighting and contrast to remove my face, adding a far more ambiguous quality, and I found it gave more clarity to my previous ideas.

Developing from this initial concept, Inspired by the surrealist works of Hans Bellmer and his search for the missing female phallus through drawings such as 'L'Aigle Mademoiselle', in which the girl's "penis" is made visible, I created the collages below. Taking images from a section of a local newspaper, I created the collages below, taking inspiration from the gender splicing of Hannah Höch's photomontages. While I do not feel these works to be particularly successful, they do open up areas for further contemplation and manipulation; I am particularly interested in Barbie's lack of genitalia, its penis like shape, and the acceptance of her as a "woman" despite this biological lack.

GemmaGem

My partner was lucky enough to visit London during the opening weekend of Yayoi Kusama's latest exhibition at the Tate Modern; while he was a big fan of the artist's work, I was new to her polka-dot covered world. For me, Kusama's works employ an obsessive degree of repetition to create works which completely consume a space, and generate claustrophobic and disorientating situations for her audience. Ranging from her early watercolours and , to 'accumulation sculptures', left, and encapsulating installations such as her fluorescent polka dot adorned room 'I'm Here, but Nothing', the. I personally found the most captivating works to be those from the 'Sex Obsession' series, in which domestic objects are 'phallus-covered'. The titles however, may have been what interested me most; names such as 'Phallus Dress' (1961) refer to the penis-like fabric shapes encrusted onto the garment, however suggest the symbolic relation to the system of power which the penis signals. I began to consider whether it would be possible to attach these penis-like form to any object in an attempt to transfer the power it represents.

Continuing my exploration into the manipulation of appropriated objects, I combined the arms of a Barbie to create the penis below. Playing upon the idea of Eve having been created from Adam's rib, similar to Duchamp 'Objet-dard', I found it particularly intriguing to consider how this "female" yet genital free doll and be reconstructed to create this gender - and power - signifying "accessory".

David Shrigley and Drag King Barbie

David Shrigley's latest exhibit 'Brain Activity' showcases his work in a variety of media, extending from his best known drawings to sculpture, photography, painting and animation. After a tutorial just the day before, in which my work was described as having a playfulness despite its perhaps serious subject matter, I was excited to see the different ways Shrigley approaches this within his practice. Wit and humour are certainly huge aspects of his work - the usual hushed silence of the gallery space was frequently punctuated by laughs from fellow viewers - combined with observations upon everyday life and an ability to create a sense of playfulness around otherwise tense situations and objects. Presenting often the more sombre aspects of reality, deciding whether or not to laugh at works such as 'I'm Dead', right, is something the artist terms a ‘moral conundrum'.

Inspired by Shrigley's dry wit and "tongue in cheek" approach to his work, I began to consider ways to explore the absurdity of what society considers integral to traditional gender roles. It was as I began to consider the themes of "play" (clearly linked with childhood), that I came across BBC’s ‘Imagine: Art Is Child’s Play’, which included interviews with artists such as Grayson Perry, whose work explores and questions childhood experiences. Perry's transvestite alter ego Claire is a frequent motif throughout his work, and to me suggests the experience of 'dressing up' as a child taken to a new platform as an adult. As suggested by Butler, 'in imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative nature of gender itself' (1990). Through their work photographers such a Del LaGrace Volcano and performance artists like Julius Kaiser, left, explore and exploit the culture of 'Drag Kings' - women who adopt the dress and mannerisms of traditional masculinity, typically for performance. Through highlighting the the performative nature of gender, these artists perhaps suggest the possibility to "act" gender, and suggest the analogy of a play, in which ‘the script’ is determined within the normative, regulatory frame, with the subject offered limited ‘costumes’ to make a constrained choice of gender (Salih, 2002). After a returning home and finding some old Barbie dolls, I started to think about their lacking genitalia - surely if they have no sex, their "gender" is as yet undetermined. Expanding upon my initial research into the photographic works of Laurie Simmons, I began to experiment with the "Drag King" Barbie below. As a child, my grandmother and I would make clothes for my dolls out of pillowcases, and I feel this can be seen in the DIY approach to "her" handmade chequered shirt - perhaps suggestive of a traditional masculine career such as a Lumberjack. In the words of Volcano 'I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across', and perhaps it is by blurring gender boundaries and adopting the "costume" of the other sex that we come closer to a more fluid and malleable sense of gender identity.

Parody and Drag and details (2012) Barbie doll, appropriated textiles

Tim Walker & Laurie Simmons

Seeing the latest works from photographer Tim Walker in Italian Vogue - a series entitled 'Like A Doll', I was instantly reminded of the work of Laurie Simmons, a photographer recently recommended to me by a tutor.

Revisiting childhood memories via the use of childhood objects, feminist photographer Laurie Simmons manipulates dolls and ventriloquist dummies to create scenes which reference domestic life. As Sarah Chapman states in an interview with Simmons, we women were ‘raised, in a way, to be housewives’ (1992), an idea which Simmons seems to parody in her surreal photographs of constructed dollhouse scenes. Speaking of her work, the artist claims ‘I was simply trying to re-create a feeling, a mood, from the time that I was growing up… they’re about our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts’ (1992). In the same interview, she recalls the method of collecting toys she had as child from a toy store’s attic, down the same branding. Compulsive collecting of childhood ephemera such as this emphasizes to me the ability of such dolls to stimulate childhood memories and experiences, which Simmons cleverly uses to subvert and reconstruct a narrative, as seen in such pieces as greyscale photographic work ‘Kitchen / Woman in Corner (1976)’, above left. The high angle shot shows a kitchen scene, in which first we almost do not even notice the female figure shut away in the corner; she has almost become a part of the room itself, suggesting the oppressive and almost suffocating atmosphere of this domestic setting. Perhaps the most powerful element of Simmons work in my eyes is her ability to correlate the child’s doll with the woman’s future – these scenes are able to manipulate childhood items to suggest and reject a traditional female fate.

'Someday My Prince Will Come'

As a young girl, I never questioned the ideals presented though the objects and encounters of my childhood; perhaps it is as we mature than we can begin to question the gender roles presented to us as children, and to the children of today. Writer’s such as Kathy Acker and Angela Carter inquire into the presentation of females within such children’s stories. Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories’ portrays a modern, feminist takes upon traditional fairytales - published in 1979, she is free to show her reader classic tales, such as the Brothers Grimm’s 1812 ‘Little Snow-White‘, through a twentieth-century perspective. In this case, ‘The Snow Child’ shows the danger of male desire upon females, and that, in reality, women can never reach the epitome of male fantasy, and in trying to do so simply harm themselves. The Count in this tale is both a characterisation of male sexuality and male power; he has no need to justify his desires, he simply “wants” and displays the unrealistic and unattainable ideal of femininity, which the Countess realises she can not aspire to. Notions of such a phallocentric order, in which men are granted the position of power for theorists such as Judith Butler demonstrates the manner in which ‘the “structure” by which the phallus signifies the penis as its privileged occasion exists only through being instituted and reiterated’ (1993). Through her influential text ‘Bodies That Matter’ (1993) Butler explores the theory that separation of the penis from the phallus leads already to a sense of loss; the phallic ideal can never live up to the physical penis, leading the male to desire greater sense of phallic power. Men have the phallus in so much as they have control. Women are the phallus ‘to the extent that they are the objects of men’s desire’ (Stelmok, 2006) - as Lacan suggests ‘the little girl must ‘be’ [the phallus] for someone else… this will include her male partner who desires her phallic body’ (1958).

'Someday My Prince Will Come', (2012) video, 4 minutes 9 seconds

Continuing from my previous piece 'I'm Wishing', and inspired by the appropriated video works of Dara Birbaum, particularly her 'Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman' (1978-79), 'Someday My Prince Will Come' is an experimental piece exploreing the possibility of an alternate ending to 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Tension created by the heightened sound and repetitive act of biting the apple offers no resolution - perhaps we should question why so desperately want Snow White to enter into the ‘compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality’ (Butler, 1990) presented to us as the logical and "normal" conclusion to this tale.

'I'm Wishing'

Coming home for Christmas, I stumbled upon a box of my old Disney cassettes, and decided to watch my first Princess film - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937). As I watched, I began to consider the gender presentations not apparent to me as a child. From academic sources such as Megan S. Lloyd's 'Unruly Alice: A Feminist View of Some Adventures in Wonderland' and Nicole Sawyer's Feminist Outlooks at Disney Princess's, published by the James Madison University, to other blogger's Disney Princesses, Capitalism and Feminism and Disney Princesses and feminism , it seemed Disney Princess films were ripe for critque. Gender identities and roles projected through the Princesses of Disney films mirrored the attitudes of Walt Disney’s 1940s patriarchal culture, the beliefs of the roles women should play in this society (O’Brien, 1996), and ultimately a phallocentric order in which male characters hold power. From the first Disney Princess, movie, Snow White... these films have ‘set forth standards for girls on how to grow up into proper women’ (Sawyer, 2011) – ultimately, as attractive, passive and victimized. From a study constructed in 2011 by Towbin, Haddock, Zimmerman, Lund and Tanner, three themes emerged from these princess films in relation to what it means to be a girl or woman – that females are domestic and likely to marry, helpless and in need of protection, and valued more for appearance than intellect (2011).

'I'm Wishing', (2012) details, knitted cassette tape

'I'm Wishing', (2012), knitted cassette tape, cassette, Disney video case

With mass media a hugely influential teacher of social norms to young viewers, consideration must be given to the values and ideologies projected by media produced for the use of children; it has been claimed once children own a video or DVD, they will watch repeatedly (Lin, 2001), a fact very true of my own childhood. However, rather than taking comfort in knowing the story “off by heart”, I would reach the pivotal scene, in which Snow White would take a bite of the fatal apple, and rewind the cassette back to the beginning. I would tell my mother that she might not eat it this time. What may at first appear as a humorous anecdote of childish naivity and imagination in hindsight offers us room for analysis; I genuinely believed this film was “real”, that it had, to a degree, a life of its own, that the ending was not already set in stone, and, most importantly, that I somehow had the power to change it. For me, this ability to “play” with gender conventions is incredibly exciting. Could it be claimed I could foresee the ‘compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality’ (Butler, 1990), founded upon the need for fulfillment? Was I hoping that, if Snow White should not choose the apple, a fate would await her different from that of playing object to her Prince Charming? Though I’m certain non-such feminist theories entered by head at this an age, I feel the piece above, 'I'm Wishing', explores such themes - the repetitive action of knitting the tape mimics the action rewinding, yet now I am physically manipulating the work itself. The unknitted tape not only signifies the ending I as a child would refuse to watch, but the chance for an alternative conclusion I hoped for both as a child, and as an adult.