‘BFF Bonfire’ (2025) by Melissa Huang is part-oil portray, part-video projection. (Pictures couresy of Leia Genis)
The film Barbie debuted in theaters in the summertime of 2023. That includes a unusual, feminist backstory concerning the iconic doll, the film follows Stereotypical Barbie as she grapples with the picture-perfect fictional life, the female beliefs she symbolizes and the unnerving actuality of life for ladies. All through this story, Barbie learns concerning the oppressive construction of patriarchy and in the end prevails by means of the ability of feminine camaraderie. It was so good.
Now, two years later, artist Melissa Huang evokes the same allegory in her solo exhibition No Doll at Whitespace Gallery. The exhibition options self-portraits composed in paint, sculpture and projected movies that heart one other iconic doll — the china doll. Utilizing the doll as a visible motif, the artist questions if unencumbered self-expression is even potential.
China dolls or, extra palatably, porcelain dolls, are iconic for his or her shiny, white pores and skin, cherubic cheeks and glazed hair. Very like Barbie, their portrayal is loaded, representing an idealized picture of womanhood slightly than a sensible one. It’s precisely this iconic but troublesome picture that disturbs the self-portraits in Huang’s exhibition.
Take, for instance, the piece titled Doll Logic (2025). A spliced portrait rests towards a carmine floor. Fractured into items, the portrait is cobbled along with equal components human — Huang herself — and porcelain doll. With jittering edges and irregular splicing, the portrait is an almost uncontained mass akin to a frozen pc display. The areas that depict Huang’s face are impartial, even perhaps apathetic, providing a clean display exhibiting no emotion — a becoming expression because it completely matches the lifeless, unblinking eyes of the doll.
Right here, the true juxtaposes the hyperreal in a battle for floor space. We consider Huang’s items as “actual” as a result of they reference a residing human, however the doll’s items replicate some social building of what a lady ought to appear like. Is that any much less actual? Seen collectively, these two seem on equal footing. They appear to ask if Huang can ever be divorced from these projected photos — can any girl?
Elsewhere, the doll is much less express, however its presence lingers in implication. Doll Home (2025) options what seems to be a type of Barbie dream home.
A tall, open-faced dollhouse is replete with a number of rooms, together with a kitchen, front room, bed room, attic and two balconies. Inside the confines of this miniature scene, partial portraits of Huang cramp, pushing towards the boundaries of their tiny area.
I discover it becoming that essentially the most unobstructed portraits of Huang are discovered within the kitchen and front room — for what are the social expectations of ladies aside from to be suppliers, of meals, of firm and of service?
Upstairs, issues get messier. Inside the bed room a head is mendacity on its aspect, a mirrored picture of itself superimposed on high. It’s troublesome to discern the 2 separate renderings, because the portraits are virtually fully obfuscated by manic scribbles.
The attic is in full chaos. Disjointed facial options, palms and shapes erupt from the area. Right here, Huang appears to say that solely by means of frenetic and personal implosions can one escape the confines of their area. Whereas this in the end leads to the dissolution of a recognizable portrait, the items are nonetheless identifiably human. One thing of the self stays.
The exhibition continues with many different portraits, all of which function a spliced and chaotic abstraction. Whereas a few of the portraits, equivalent to Cloud Child (2025), are set towards landscapes — a setting I discovered troublesome to reconcile inside the metaphor of the dollhouse — shut inspection of some items, equivalent to Ready to Meet You (2025), left me wanting extra thrilling or intricate manipulation of the paint. This exhibition efficiently communicates its message.
A part of Huang’s message is dire — escaping social constructs, significantly as a girl, is sort of unimaginable to do and are available out intact — however the message shouldn’t be with out encouragement. In Huang’s world, she asserts that there are lots of methods to piece collectively a portrait. As with the opening photographs of Barbie, which humorously mimics the film 2001: A House Odyssey, dolls could be websites of re-magination but in addition rage. Now that now we have the instruments to piece them again collectively, who is aware of what kind they’ll take?
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Leia Genis is a trans artist and author at the moment primarily based in Atlanta. Her writing has been revealed in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Burnaway, Artwork Papers and Quantity: Inc. Genis is a graduate of the Savannah School of Artwork and Design and can be an avid bicycle owner with a contest historical past on the nationwide stage.