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Initially
the dynamic of the relationship between Jemima and Dolly referenced
ventriloquism, but as a
guest artist of the Graduate School of Art, University of California
Los Angeles from 1998 - 99, Brown sought an increasingly active role
for her 'clone'.
Despite
being an inanimate object cobbled together from sex doll parts, mannequin
limbs and body casts, Dolly has acted as a catalyst and even a collaborator
in the making of the work. As other characters took centre stage Jemima
and Dolly, themselves the central subject of earlier work, moved to
the peripheries of the image, to the point that they were present only
as authors.
Hybridised animal people and a new generation of little girls have functioned
either as modular family groups or stand-alone characters, whilst
'Mum and Dad Me'
were the first in a series of parents, couples and families constructed
from the cast body parts of multiple subjects. If the question was at
first 'who am I?' perhaps it now encompasses 'where do I come from?'
The gap between author and subject collapses further as all of the dolls
incorporate some physical feature of Jemima/Dolly.
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