Daena Title’s long-term obsession with women’s issues and contemporary dynamics led her to mine the Barbie doll as metaphor in her recent series of paintings and photographs. For “DROWN the DOLLS”, Title submerged the Barbie doll (and herself) in a backyard pool and then aimed her camera upwards towards the under-side of the pool’s surface. The resulting images of both doll, pubescent girls, and their distorted reflections pit what is “true” vs. what is false. The reflections, the Barbie doll, the paint: all represent a reality that is simultaneously distorted and representational. This overlap of tensions and contrasts allow the visceral and the intellectual to reinforce and reflect one another in continuing, reverberating dialogue.
Daena Title
May 5, 2011