| In the summer of 2006, Cecilia Jurado turned a mini space in Tribeca into a dollhouse. Formerly, this space was an entrance to a building, which gentrification had transformed into a black hole. After renting the space for two and a half years and conceptualizing this project, in 2006 “Welcome to my Dollhouse” was finally realized. The project consisted of the artist living in this dollhouse for a week where people gave her dolls as presents. Interested in beauty as a social phenomenon, this artist from Lima found various comparisons between this project and her previous investigations into the topic and life in New York. |  |
Welcome To My Dollhouse – Aldo Sánchez
In the summer of 2006, Cecilia Jurado turned a mini space in Tribeca into a dollhouse. Formerly, this space was an entrance to a building, which gentrification had transformed into a black hole. After renting the space for two and a half years and conceptualizing this project, in 2006 “Welcome to my Dollhouse” was finally realized.
The project consisted of the artist living in this dollhouse for a week where people gave her dolls as presents. Interested in beauty as a social phenomenon, this artist from Lima found various comparisons between this project and her previous investigations into the topic and life in New York.
"Dollhouse" explores the notion of femininity as it is related to tenderness and the desire to be protected. The figure of the female as a doll collector—Cecilia Jurado whose features and clothes make her look like a little girl—living in a house as if she were one of them, alludes to the ambivalent desire of the maternal—a guardian for them—and the childish—asking for dolls as gifts. This female side also has a wicked edge: it opens up the possibility for the corruption of innocence in a girl living in a Tribeca dollhouse, a place that is wide open from 10 am to 8 pm.
This dollhouse is related to the dream of thousands of very young women who immigrate to New York with the idea of becoming part of the beauty industry. Many of them are imported from underdeveloped countries, and are willing to live in communal bunk beds as long as they turn into models, at least for a season. But the project also deals with the overcrowding of the city, a very expensive price (literally and figuratively) in exchange for making each person’s dream come true.
The one-week dollhouse drew interesting reactions from the neighborhood population. People took care of the artist while she slept during the day (the bed could be seen from the street), gave her food or stopped by to say hello. The last day of the project, during a closing reception, the artist gave the participants a photograph of the doll they had given her, an out-of-focus picture. This idea is related to her project “Oral Cute,” which was completed between 2005 and 2006 when Jurado took similar looking pictures of international top models participating in New York Fashion Weeks. The result is so similar that it is hard to tell the pictures apart.
With the close to 100 dolls she received, Cecilia Jurado plans to use the first version of her project for a new and larger presentation, now with the collaboration of architect Gordon Kipping. Her dolls are all eagerly waiting the new additions, more plastic roommates to finally give a warm and suffocating embrace to the artist.
