Untitled #253

Once again, the body is at the center. But the artist is completely absent. To compose her strange “still lifes” mixing feminine and masculine, she uses fragments of mannequins: trunks, stomachs, legs, arms, genitalia, and so on. Displaying a sexuality as explicit as it is dehumanized, the works verge on the grotesque—like the blood sausage coming out of the hairy vulva of a terrifying old woman (Untitled #250)—reducing bodies to gaping holes. The surrealist influence is striking, and the political context of puritanical America, especially as HIV/AIDS raged, even more so. Certain body fragments are painted, playing on the ambiguity between the living and nonliving. Thus, the two masks kissing (Untitled #305) in the next room, where it is no longer possible to tell false from true. A few years later, the artist again used dismembered dolls, which she manipulated in all directions. A nod to Hans Bellmer, but also to the cruelty and perversity of children, who play at torturing their dolls and transform these transitional objects into erotic toys.