CLASS DESCRIPTION
This lecture examines the doll as both a culturally significant and a deeply gendered object, following its long trajectory from prehistoric figurines to contemporary artistic practices. Starting with three central case studies (the Venus of Willendorf, the Anatomical Venus, and Barbie) the session considers how dolls and doll play reflect and shape dominant ideas about femininity, beauty, embodiment, and discipline. Drawing on feminist theory, psychoanalysis, and material culture studies, it explores not only what dolls represent but also what people do with them: how play creates a space where desire, projection, control, and fantasy converge, and where social norms can be rehearsed, resisted, or inverted.
Alongside this historical and conceptual framework, the lecture briefly turns to examples from modern and contemporary art where artists work with dolls or doll-like figures to think about the gendered body, the double, or the abject. These artistic moments help illuminate how the cultural functions of the doll persist, shift, and reappear, and how the figure of the doll continues to offer a way to question how bodies are represented, gendered, and understood.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Berrak Güloğlu is an Istanbul-based visual artist and researcher whose work investigates the relationship between the body, psychic wounding, and the material structures through which care, vulnerability, and identity are negotiated. Her research brings together psychoanalytic thought, feminist theory, and contemporary visual cultures of health to examine how bodies are disciplined, protected, exposed, and imagined.
She holds an MA in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design from Sabancı University, where she now works as a Research and Teaching Assistant. She has developed and instructed courses on artistic research and modern art on undergraduate and high school level, and has collaborated with institutions such as the Sakıp Sabancı Museum on workshops and pedagogical projects.
INSTAGRAM: @berrakguloglu
WEBSITE: www.berrakguloglu.com
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FAQs
ACCESSING THE LIVE LINK
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RECORDING
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PAY WHAT YOU CAN
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