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(click image
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Dollar-store
doll lampoons religion
SUSAN WALKER
ART BY NUMBERS
The
icon painting just took a turn for the worse — or not, depending on your
religious convictions. Teresa Ascenção's series of 12 images called "Sem
Saudade" ("Without Regrets"), part of a Contact Festival photo exhibit at
Gallery 1313, is inspired by Portuguese Catholic customs.Ascenção's
protagonist is a small doll purchased, along with most of the props in her
little installations, in dollar stores. She photographed the sets and turned
them into lenticular photos, so parts move when you change viewing position.
In one image, the doll sees the Virgin Mary in a sheet hanging on the clothesline.
In another, the doll wears a confirmation dress, or it may be a wedding dress.
"It amounts to the same thing," says Ascenção, a 36-year-old artist born
in Portugal. 1 Ascenção used lenticular imaging, a technology
from the 1920s, updated with the computer. "I took sequential photographs
of each stage in the animation with a digital camera. Then I put it into
software that interlaces the pictures into one single image. Then it's printed,
but nothing happens until you overlay the photo with a lenticular lens, a
clear plastic sheet that feels like the ridged surface of an LP. It forces
your eye to one of the sequences."2 "I went searching all over town
for a doll. I didn't want to use something everyone would recognize, like
a Barbie. She's a no-name doll, but I changed her face. I lifted her eyes
up in excitement with paint and used a special sculpting tool to increase
the size of her nose. She didn't look European enough."3 "Some of
the clothes I found in dollar stores. But I made some of the clothing. I
was trying to work within the customs of my Portuguese heritage. I did a
lot of shopping in fabric stores. I was sewing and doing manual construction
to make the sets. The sets are a little larger than they appear, about 1 1/2
x 1 1/2 x 2 cubic feet."4 For anyone offended by the send-up of religion,
Ascenção explains that the work is really about how Roman Catholicism is
interpreted in the Portuguese community. A couple of the pieces, such as
"Fun in Bed," coyly suggest female masturbation with the movement of the
doll's hands. "For a lot of women in Catholic culture there are taboos associated
with controlling our sexuality," she says.
Details:
A Photography Exhibition runs through May 31 at Gallery 1313, 1313 Queen
St. W. Wednesdays to Sundays, noon to 6 p.m. 416-979-3941. Ascenção's pictures
will be seen again in an outdoor exhibition at the Distillery Historic District,
starting June 21.
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