I am a monster under my skin. I wander the thin margin of my body's surface. One moment I adore its soft folds and sleek muscles, the next those deformities horrify me. It is in these waverings that I try to find the truth of my body, of every body.
Most people change their bodies through plastic surgery, or intensive diets, or by immersing themselves in a digital avatar. I change my body by reinventing it again and again and again. Recreating myself in porcelain, I can mutilate, hybridize and streamline the ultimately unwieldy and banal spaces of my living form. I can try on as many versions of myself as I wish with joyous and feral abandon.
I choose to fabricate my re-imagined selves in their particular form because I grew up coveting the effortless delicacy of my childhood dolls. They held a treasured status — harbingers of other possible selves, object tutorials for motherhood and three-dimensional manuals in stunted sexuality. I find myself perplexed by their influence. They were so very precious, and yet judging by how few of my dolls survive, also very disposable.
To be intimate with my new dolls, I must remember the lessons of my youth and blend them with the complexity of my adult self. I handle each limb, torso, head and breast many times before it is complete. They come into the world in pieces, having no sense of cohesion, fragmented bodies. After their skins harden and begin to reflect light, I must handle them again, soiling their pristine surfaces with my finger oils as I lay in their tendons and connective tissue. The work I do is akin to that of a pathologist, examining, extracting, weighing. When I am finished, I must bathe them to remove the evidence of my fondling.
I find my body compelling, both hideous and beautiful. In that I am not alone. Models strive to be bone hangers with a skim of flesh, Americans swell on a tide of high-fructose corn syrup and little girls wrinkle noses in disgust as they poke at their slender bodies. And we spend billions on our bodies, begging science to elevate us from our reduced states, yearning to be beautiful. Each of my dolls carries that yearning - I weave it into them with each new coil, hone it with each cut. In this way I can walk not just the margins of my own abhorrent body, but the beautiful monstrosities in every body. I move across landscapes of skin leaving dolls scattered along the way.
Kira Campbell