My plan was always to have four rooms so when I found a cabinet with two shelves and three drawers it was a slight problem but I decided to use it for something different and take this opportunity to tie my project together. The reason I did not want to have a bathroom in my dolls house was because my home, being victorian would not have originally had one.
My first idea was to fill the drawer with spare dolls house furniture, wallpaper and fabric. This would also make the piece interactive however I was not sure if that was something I wanted as it would turn it into more of a functional piece.
I decided I wanted to put something in the drawer which would contrast with the dolls house and break it up, making it feel less congruent. After thinking about this for a while I decided to feel the drawer with condoms, the reason I chose to do this was because it juxtaposes how dolls houses were used to teach girls how to run a household or for women to use to create idealised interior or for people to store prized possessions, which would be talking points at parties. My dolls house, being disguised from the front, is secretive only revealing its secrets when its opened, and condoms are in themselves secretive, something that people hideaway in drawers. This drawer is meant to disconcerted the viewer.
However I still felt as if the drawer was missing something, recently, like many other people I have been shocked by the news of the Alabama abortion laws, women not having control over their own bodies in the 21st century is something very terrifying and hard to believe. Maybe we are going back to the time where girls were destined only to be housewives and were taught how they would run a home using a dolls house. this reminded me of the dystopian novel The Handmaids Tale, the quote “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere as long as it stays inside the maze.” stood out to me as we are tricked into thinking we now live in an equal society but how far have we really come. Are we just trapped within our own dolls houses just thinking we are free?
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