by Toot Yung Gallery Location: Tooto Yung Gallery
Artist(s): Claude ESTEBE
Date: 3 Sep - 15 Oct 2011
The Toot Yung Gallery is pleased to present latest works of photographer and researcher Claude Estebe from France. This exhibition is about femininity, modernity and economic globalization in Asia. The tiny no name dolls used as models for Claude Estèbe’s photographs are a ghostly testimony of the millions of women working in small Asian factories for the sake of economic development. Claude Estèbe isolates some chosen dolls, which have a sense of mirroring humanity emanating from their defects and astonishing bright pop colors. Although they are mass products, these cheap plastic figures are still painted by hand, and their design retains something of their own visual popular culture. In this sense, these no name dolls are somehow fragile and human. Unlike the perfectly cloned copyrighted American fashion dolls with their stereotyped aggressive smile, the very own defectiveness of these petite dolls make them unique.