The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 38
maybe cruel maybe not. Their impact is lessened by
the title that contains the word doll. Not sweetly as
in “baby” but more in the context of “voodoo.”
Other Oka Doner works in the show, the assembly
of Soul Catchers (1970–1979) gaze vacantly at us as
Michele Oka Doner, Tattooed Doll II, (Artist's Proof), 1968–2007.
Each Isichapuitu bears witness in one way or another.
Virgin Bride II (1998) reflects on the condition of women,
and because Velarde is a not an anthropologist, but a
contemporary artist, on the condition of women today. This
figure stands as a proud feminist with her blood-stained
skirt held high and rudely visible, exposing the double
standard in gender where in many cultures the woman
still has to deliver proof of her virginity to be considered
worthy of marriage when no such test exists for men.
world. The role of the soul catcher has been discussed
in relationship to the work of Michael Lucero. The staffs
are phallic and appear carved, not objects of nature,
but made by man for purposes that may be sexual. The
works are variously porcelain and stoneware. But that
ceramic idenitity is not played up, partly because both
materials arrived long after the imagined age of Oka
Doner’s artifacts. Instead they have the appearance of
stone or bone, and appear formed with a knife or chisel,
rubbed smooth by polishing, not softly by touch. And
where a light glaze does appear, it seems not to be an
In the sense of her figure baring herself (most
applied surface, but rather a part of the artifact that has
of the pieces carry her face and are to a degree
been buffed to its shine by wear, by ardent touching.
autobiographical) Velarde’s work connects to Michele
Oka Doner’s Tattooed Dolls from the late sixties. They
too bare themselves, but in a different and perhaps more
shocking way. Doner’s tattoos are bizarre, they seem to
be made under the skin; a section of skin is cut away
and tattooing is revealed on the viscera underneath. On
the head it seems that the needle directly touches the
brain. Arms are severed. Despite the placid look on the
doll’s face, violence is being done. It is unquestionably
the work of a sorceress, and I speak metaphorcially. In
early cultures these kind of figures would be feared but
their maker even more so. The signifiers are radical,
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though blinded by some horror encountered in the spirit
Fertility is implied in many of the works we have explored.
That is very much the Earth Mother’s role. And although
Growing Towers (1983) by Charles Simonds has no direct
human relationship, it does possess a powerful, strident
sense of fecundity. Simonds is known for propogating a
race of mythical little people that lived in tiny communities
built painstakingly from tiny little bricks beginning forty
years ago in crumbling corners of downtown Manhattan.
Made of clay, they clearly mimicked the adobe Pueblo
communities of New Mexico where Simonds had spent
some time.