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The dollhouse is a toy fondly remembered from my childhood.
Countless hours were spent
fastidiously arranging the miniature furniture in its rooms. These
rooms provided the setting for the domestic scenes myself and my
playmates would enact with our dolls — scenes that mimicked
the day-to-day household routines of our mothers. This form of play
amongst young girls was not only an imitation of the maternal role
as we observed it, but, presumably, constituted a type of practice
for our future lives as women. Now, as an adult, feminist, artist
and mother, I revisit the dollhouse. The idealized view of domesticity
that informed my childhood dollhouse is reconfigured by my adult
self as a place much more complex, even contradictory, in nature.
In stark contrast to the innocuous role-playing of childhood — when
one could ‘play Mommy’ — as an actual parent, the
actions I take have real life consequences. This simple fact can,
at times, be the cause of anxiety. Additionally, while the household
provides a peaceful refuge from the hectic pace of the outside world,
the daily negotiations between career aspirations and familial responsibilities
simultaneously render the house a site of friction and conflict.
An exploration of the conflicts that arise from these competing interests
was, in part, the impetus behind my installation project entitled
The Disobedient Dollhouse.
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