Fighting the Barbie Bondage
Barbie figures are placed in biological environments, where mould and decomposition transform the manufactured ideal.
The work examines the encounter between an artificial image of beauty and the processes of living matter: ageing, change and decay.
What happens to an ideal over time?
The project begins with an object made to embody an ideal: a mass-produced doll whose appearance can be repeated and replaced. Placed in a biological environment, that seemingly fixed image is exposed to change. Mould spreads across the containers and the figures, disturbing the polished surfaces associated with manufactured beauty.
The installation brings two different logics together: the reproducibility of plastic and the unpredictable activity of living matter. Ageing and decomposition become part of the image. As the ideal deteriorates, the work asks why an altered body is so readily treated as something to discard — and why replacement seems easier than accepting change.