Soft power

by Barbara Ash :: You need to be a member to contact artists →Join :: Portfolio

I'm a visual artist that works with installations, sculptures and drawings that explore and play with themes of social conditioning, creating my own “otherworldly” toy and doll imagery. I work with issues of female representation and use the doll form as a vehicle to examine issues of conformity and individuality, side-stepping orthodox modes of traditional representative approaches to the female figure. Themes in my work are vulnerability and exuberance and I use the doll imagery, in both 3d and 2d approaches, to enact various postures, exploring a whole range of psycho-emotional states, re-positioning the female form in a more dynamic, intimate, context.

I am currently developing a large body of work that will form a diverse, but linked, range of sculptures employing the doll-form called “Soft Power”. The work looks at the emotion realm and plays with ideas of femininity; it can be seen as a celebratory tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to contemporary mass-media representations; reclaiming the female form in a positive, more "human" context.