Organized by MSVU Art Gallery
Allyson Mitchell’s Brain Child assembles a collection of over one hundred ceramic figurines, depicting little girls clad in old-fashioned bonnets, long skirts, and frilly pinafores. These figurines were particularly ubiquitous in the 1970s and 1980s, with Holly Hobbie, Strawberry Shortcake, the doe-eyed Precious Moments kids, and others modeled a particularly retrograde version of feminine presentation and behavior, one where little girls are expected to be sweet, and kind, ever-cheerful, tidy, quiet and demure, and above all, cute as buttons.
Within Mitchell’s installation, these figurines are recast as pint-sized femme-savants, whose oversized bonnets protect their big, beautiful brains. They are queued up, in two long, curling lines before a giant brain, crafted out of repurposed pink afghans, that hovers high above them. Although this ritual gathering suggests a collective, perhaps cult-like devotion to intellectual pursuits, Mitchell has given the figurines subversive makeovers that emphasize their individuality and distinctiveness. Some have been reglazed in ultra-bright fluorescent hues, others in a 1970s palette of mossy, murky shades of green and brown, rich oranges, reds, and golds. Some wear moody all-black goth while others are awash in highly saturated colours and clashing patterns that cover not only their dresses and bonnets, but also their faces, hands, and hair. Together, they attest to the expansive and subversive potential of femme identity, presentation, and intellect.
Image: Allyson Mitchell, Brain Child, 2008, mixed media installation. Photo courtesy of Union Gallery and the artist.
