THE DOLL REVOLT:

A Digital Exhibition of Girl-made Artworks

Welcome. We are pleased to introduce the first virtual gallery sponsored by the NWSA. The Doll Revolt showcases artworks made by girls about girls. Why do girls need their own space? We argue that there are four primary reasons for the creation of this gallery.

• See Me, Feel Me: Emerging feminist artists whose work areas are not defined by the gallery system need a place to show. Audiences hungry for something more than the usual 10% token representation of women artists could delight in having access to such provocative works. Anyone searching for artworks about girls on the web has to troll through at least twenty porn and pin-up girl sites before reaching even one artwork. Thus a gallery dedicated to these explorations seems in order.

• Show Me the Way: According to scholars such as Anita Harris, the role of the girl is being constructed as “a vanguard of new subjectivity.” Girls are now our guides for mobility, pervayors of quick fix solutions for quick change artists who prevail through their capacities to morph into the latest desired object while still getting what they want the old fashioned beauty-meets-the-beast way.  A gallery that provides space to trace the pedagogical imperatives of the iconic pop girl goes beyond a place to gather evidence and make assumptions. It also offers viewers a way to keep their eyes on the prize.

• Built to Spill: Girl in the popular imaginery occupies the space of uber-consumer, or at least consumer-in-training, to her elder counter-part woman. But what does she produce? A gallery devoted to the products girl makes both celebrates her creative capacities and foregrounds her situated responses to living in the world. She has a space to talk back, spit out, and whistle her own tune. The inauguration of a girl-centered art space engenders a place of possibility.

• Love for Sale: The virtual status of the gallery means that encounters with original art objects are impossible. If the girl gallery is to function outside the traditional gallery system, there must be no exchange of commodities for cash. Instead, the pedagogical function of its founding becomes a practice. Viewers can come here to learn about girls, to interrogate their works, and to leave traces of their experience in marks of their own.

We began with a call for entries sent out over the web and posted to our website...

...What happens when dolls revolt, talk back, and act up? Are you soft, wet, empathetic, small, gentle, loving, tentative, pliable, frivolous, flaky, and DANGEROUS? Something more than a cupcake used to sell products and lifestyles? Send us your own artworks about the glories and frustrations of being a 21st century girl. Self-portraits with your favorite stuff, action shots of everyday events, contemplative drawings from the inside of your head, video/audio diaries, or animated futures — it's all up to you...

After receiving well over one hundred submissions, we sampled works from about twenty artists. Then we invited our doll to come out and play. The gallery’s mascot is Patty, an articulated doll whose parts reverberate when you touch her. Currently, Patty is a prototype. She is the pathway through which viewers access and encounter the artworks. Click on Gallery Tours and Patty will be your Docent. Each Gallery Tour includes a Docents' Talk.

The docent tours came about as we deliberated on how best to showcase the works. The categories emerged from our encounters with the work. As virtual docents, we are energized more by the spaces between the works, than the individual works or the privileged space of the art maker. Patterns emerged. In between the spaces, girl as a performative aggregate arrives. Borrowing from Judith Butler’s notion of gender as a performative, we argue that girl is found only through her actions, not yet a subject who has agency. She cannot adequately perform her gender. Gender performance can only be articulated by subjects. The power of the girl lies in her capacity to play with the strictures of gender, escaping both the privileges and the consequences of subjects.

The docent tours constitute our map of the performative strategies deployed by girls in the selected works. 

Leisha Jones and Bonnie MacDonald

Curators

6/17/2006