Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Tiffany Duong

Portrait With Dolls II: Microplastics

Self-portrait of the artist committing seppuku, revealing the dolls that hide in her body.

“Corresponding to the imaginary world of play and the intangible nature of the subconscious, 'Portrait With Dolls' exemplifies the physical act of play by juxtaposing myself alongside Barbie within the same pictorial. Here, I engage with the doll as one would in childhood play scenarios, however, with matured intention: instead imbuing grimness, grotesqueness, and debauchery onto the innocence of nostalgia.In "Microplastics," the act of seppuku attempts to center the notion of my orientalism in contrast to the colonialist and patriarchal ideologies that Barbie is a convention thereof. As such, this act of self-mutilation allows me to cleanse my body of the restrictive binaries of social systems of oppression.”