Giant Wave of Barbie Dolls Sculpture Makes a Splash
Barbie generally comes in one shape and size (well, except for artist Nickolay Lamm's Lammily, of course), but one artist has taken the doll to different heights in a mesmerizing sculpture.
During a trip to visit her ill sister in her home country of Belgium, Annette Thas was overwhelmed by memories of her childhood. Wanting to translate those emotions into an inclusive piece of art that lots of people could connect with and understand, Thas (who now resides in Australia) eventually chose Barbie dolls as her medium. “First it was a wave of dolls and then fine-tuning the idea over the next couple of years turned it into the Barbie dolls as a universal icon that most people know and understand,” Thas says in a video interview. The final product? A wildly impressive, 13-foot-tall "wave" of nothing but Barbies.
To achieve the sense of being submerged, Thas explains that the wave’s size had to be just right — above the head and encompassing the eyes' periphery (the sculpture is around 16 feet wide). She then calculated that it would take between 3,000 and 5,000 Barbies to encompass the structure entirely. (To put into perspective how extreme an undertaking accruing thousands of Barbies is, Bettina Dorfman, who holds the world record for the largest collection of Barbies, took eight years to cull 15,000 dolls.) Thas posted notices online and found dolls at thrift stores and secondhand shops. Some of her finds had remnants of their past lives on them. One Barbie, for example, has “Jessica” written on the forehead and the chest is doodled with “please love me.” Thas calls these special ones “totally invaluable” and a “collection of history.”
The sculpture, titled "Wave 1," was exhibited on the beach at Sculpture by the Sea — an event that took place this month in Perth, Australia, and featured 74 creations from local and international artists — where it won both the Kid's Choice and People's Choice awards. While the project was initially inspired by Thas's personal experience, it took on even greater meaning as it developed. Barbies are now sold with diverse skin and hair colors, but Thas chose to use only the white dolls with blond hair (who, you'll probably notice, all happen to be nude) to speak to society's beauty ideals. “To me, everybody is equal, but when we look at advertising we very much get spooned in what we should look like and this is really a comment on that, too,” says Thas. Maybe she should give Lammily a call — they'd definitely have a lot to talk about.
