Installations - A Paper Doll To Call My Own

A Paper Doll To Call My Own

How much of who we are is defined by our gender, how we look and what we wear? The Paper Doll exhibit explored this question by providing life-sized outfits that could be donned by means of hanging the paper garments from people’s shoulders, reminiscent of the paper dolls we played with in the 1940’s. To make it more intriguing, the outfits were sized so that clothing depicting traditional male roles fit better on women (slightly smaller), while the “women’s” clothing fit men (slightly bigger). There were also three dressing rooms defined by paper partitions, with funhouse’ mirrors in each that made the viewer look tall and thin, short and fat, or “normal.” A soundtrack of music from the 1940’s accompanied the entire run of the show.