In South Korea, pervasive beauty norms promoting doll-like aesthetics place considerable pressure on women and contribute to the objectification of the female body through the normalization of cosmetic surgery practices. Within this context, the body may become the plaything of surgeons’ surreal fantasies, subjected to cutting, reshaping and reassembly. Echoing the logic of the “Exquisite Corpse” (invented by the Surrealists in the 1930s), these interventions can produce unreal assemblages resembling perfect dolls: artificial, specious and distorted, they appear less as living bodies than as non-living objects, like adorable cadavers.
This neckpiece’s technical process is therefore based upon the method specific to articulated porcelain dolls, while following the rules of the “Exquisite Corpse” game. It was created during a ceramic residency at the Clayarch Gimhae Museum in South Korea.
Neckpiece. Casted & polished Korean pink porcelain, stringing elastic cord for articulated porcelain doll. 2015.