TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE: A DIALOGUE WITH FEAR
“He loves me, he loves me not,” says a woman’s voice, “She loves me, she loves me not,” says a man’s, over and over in an alternating singsong. From another speaker a woman tells of hearing a crying baby she cannot assist, ending with the question: “Where are you now, burnt baby boy in the blackened room, and why do you live on so fiercely in my memory?” Each time she finishes her story a high-pitched bell rings twice.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Relief from these troubling images can be found in Laura Saaf’s To Teach Girls Proper Conduct, a group of five humorous, inventive dolls crafted out of fabric and household objects. One, made of brown, gold, and orange kitchen-curtain fabric imprinted with hearts and roosters, sports cooking utensils in the place of head and limbs. Another, fashioned from brightly colored fabric bearing images of cherries and strawberries, has a clear goblet for a head and plastic grapes for legs. With their perfect hourglass figures and perfect posture–clamped firmly to the wall with metal brackets, they stand up straight–Saaf’s dolls remind us of the restrictions traditionally imposed on women, of their consignment to the safe or at least condoned territories of nurturance and domesticity. But these are limitations more characteristic of the 50s than of the 90s, and nothing about these dolls suggests a connection to contemporary issues.
