DOLLS HOUSE

The multimedia installation Dolls House deals with the cultural construction of femininity and the idea of the ideal woman that is conveyed in several fairy tales namely Sleeping Beauty. The drawings and the construction of the house were made in co-authorship with my husband João Carlos Castro Neves. The props used for the realization of the videos are dolls, dolls' houses and furniture. These objects are understood as symbols of ideologies of patriarchal Western culture in particular of values and norms of social conduct that are clearly marked by gender stereotypes and whose main aim is to teach children normative heterosexual behaviour. The project is composed of two interconnected pieces:
i) A dolls' house on the scale of people, understood as one among multiple cultural spaces where the femininity of female children is constructed. The spectator is invited to enter, physically and psychologically, in a space that evokes the period of life when gender roles are primarily instilled and incorporated.
ii) A video entitled Loveliest Woman in the World that consists of a parodic retelling of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, namely the part where the fairies give their gifts to the girl. The gifts promise to transform Sleeping Beauty into an ideal woman, virtuous, beautiful and rich. The girl is gifted with beauty, an angelic temperament, grace, the ability to dance to perfection, the voice of a nightingale and a talent for playing instruments. This project resulted from an invitation by Leslie Wright, director of the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA, to participate in the group exhibition Where Are you from? Contemporary Portuguese Art, which ran at this gallery from 1 February to 20 April 2008. Faulconer Gallery and Instituto Camões, Portugal, were responsible for the co-production of this project.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

– The Loveliest Woman in the World, 2008, video 'loop' (8:13): color, son. HD (PAL).
– 1 wooden construction similar to a dollhouse: 200 (W) x 200 (H) x 140 (L) cm.
– 1 plasma TV set placed on the inside left side wall of the house. LCD 40" (101 cm), HDTV (PAL), 111(W) x 72(H) x 33(D) cm.
– 1 HDTV (PAL) DVD player placed behind the TV set.
– 1 black cushion measuring 110 x 50 x 1.5 cm.
– Medium brightness.