The endless investigation of how the world, the people, and we as human beings occupy our own spaces provides the blueprint for my own personal narrative. The dollhouse in this series represents a marveled after utopia of having our own imaginary self-made space. As someone who grew up playing with dollhouse, moving the bits and pieces of the house and dolls fed into my quest for perfection. Laurie Simmons Color Pictures, Long House, and Kaleidoscope House all explore elements of houses and or people in these houses and how they interact with each other. Two decontextualized components combine to engage the viewer in how both the whole of a house is a domestic safe space encouraging the gaze of the onlooker and the body placed within that space.

     This dollhouse is a direct critique and attack on all these “standards” Though the work reflects the personal living space and reflects upon my own transgressions, there is an underlying current of a mass consumer culture that has been targeted to everyone. In the society I identify with there is a social imaginary standard that has been pushed upon us. The neighborhood I live in reflects a stagnant mold that lacks a sense of individuality from the outside. It is as if the same person sold us all on the same house, but in different plots. This culture of feeling the need to buy because others have it promoted by mass consumerism and mass production is the direct reflection within my own household. My own existence is a direct critique of the standard mold of existing as I am a black body placed in a dollhouse whose intended audience was targeted towards the white and the wealthy. My stance is firm and aggressively attacks the viewer into questioning why this feels uncanny to them. Is it because I physically do not belong or is it because we’ve been fed a truth for so long that anything that does not correspond with that truth is inherently off-putting?

     The Dollhouse series stands upon a mountain of history as to what and why we all do what we do. As I’ve investigated this truth, what I’ve known has been my standard of existing. As I exist within this bubble, I constantly am conflicted with my own identity as a standard to identify with has been fed to me through this consumer culture.