Beauty and body image are often introduced in childhood through the play with dolls. While revisiting my own girl years I attempt to resurrect discarded and used up dolls as living entities, the way I remember them.

Sensuous, alive, expressive and full of gestures, the dolls and my play have been recorded on film. Suggestive and mysterious, these dolls become seductive and sexual. Little detail is revealed as we view the dolls through semi-transparent material. I recall window displays I saw in Europe, with live women behind white lacy curtains. Or perhaps I have caught my sitters through a fogged shower stall, and the viewer becomes a voyeur stealing a peak. At once innocent and fallen, I hope my dolls express the complexities of being a girl and a woman on a personal and emotional way.

Kati Toivanen