It's All in Her Head

My work involves looking into family memory - how traces from the past find their way into our psyches and are passed on through family snapshots, oral history, and visual memory. The performance relates to a doll known as "Shrinkin' Violette" which was presented to me in the mid-60s. I worshipped this doll, I remember her voice vividly, as well as the photograph of me holding her, how happy I seemed. The doll became a sort of precious object in my archive of childhood memories.

I am now investigating what this doll means, to me personally, to my children - as I also comment on the social agenda behind her making. Though her vibrato voice has not fared well with age, I can make it out because I recall exactly:

"My name is Shrinkin' Violette. I have butterflies in my tummy. I'm afraid of noisy boys. Please help me talk to people. It's just awful to be shy. I'm afraid of everything."

In the performance I bring the questions raised to the next generation by involving my daughter in the literal deconstruction of the doll. We sit at a child's size table and dress in "uniform" to write the doll's words on the board, connecting the constructs of social institution and objects of play. My motivation for the piece is my curiosity at the mirroring possibilities of gender-directed toys such as this. Furthermore, how long is their reach? If I were feeling purely nostalgic about my preschool memories I might present this keepsake doll to my daughters with only the smiling photograph. Then how would they view the value of quietness in girls? Although the idea for the piece is rooted in the past, the relevance for asking such questions becomes ever more apparent in the sex-segregated aisles of present-day toystores.