Little Girl 1 (Human Hair)

Medium: Vintage porcelain doll, human hair, nylon tights, gesso, acrylic, pencil, polyester stuffing, pastel, chalk.

Little Girl 1 (Human Hair) features a doll with long dark brown hair. The lower part of its arms and legs are porcelain and it has a soft fabric body and head. The doll is barefoot and undressed.

One of two wraith-like ‘little girl’ sculpture dolls. This standing doll has straggly, ankle-length, dark brown real human hair. In this ‘hacked doll’ artwork the original ‘pretty’ head of the doll has been replaced with an ‘ugly’ uncanny head with a pale unhealthy complexion. The ‘otherworldly’ appearance is suggestive of a child that has crawled out of a grave in a vampire movie. The artwork is one of a collection of hacked dolls with replaced heads first begun in 2023 and continuing to the present day.

First begun in 2023 the doll was started in response to research into ancient Mayan terracotta figurines with strangely shaped heads. The elite members of the Mayan ruling class practiced a form of skull deformation to create a different appearance that separated them from the general population. This ancient culture seems bizarre and horrific to us now because the full understanding of their culture is lost in time. When combined with the vintage Victoriana style of the original doll an uncanny otherworldliness emerges.

Metal stand included.