Collector’s Addiction uses dolls as anthropomorphic objects to challenge gender paradigms which present femininity as passive, beautiful and maternal. The dismemberment of the dolls and the abjection of the installation is a refusal to depict the female body as orderly and self contained. The fragmented doll pieces also allude to the violence involved in conforming to beauty standards. The idiosyncratic taxonomy used to categorise the jars challenges the authority of established hierarchies of knowledge. Rejecting the white-cube aesthetic for domestic sensibilities, Collector’s Addiction disregards the separation of high and low culture in its abundance of cheap, found materials. Amassed from charity shops, the jars reference both the museological and the domestic. The viewer becomes both voyeur and object of the dolls’ gazes, subverting the conventional roles of artwork and audience.

Photography by Yang-En Hume