Made

Dolls are creepy.

There was another aspect in my child's inquiry for knowledge which was beyond the curiosity to remove her limbs, look for signs of follicles at the end of her flawless curls or disassemble the mechanics of the single syllabled vocabulary. It was hope. That is to identify a common ground and to establish connection with another kind that had been made to express an idea of life rather than life itself.

A human made machine-drilled holes in the vinyl cast of the doll's head. A human hand painted the smile – a stamped expression of life beyond the mystery of Mona Lisa. Another hand machine - sew the clothes to the latest fashion and in-stilled the eye bulbs – to only imply two tulips that would never grow. Disturbed with their immaculate stillness I fulfilled my duty to the hood of imagination, animating stillness through childlike interventions.

If you'd think that to understand dolls was an intimidating experience...Wait! Until, a self-standing Russian doll, the size of a 3 year old, plucks the ground of your eighth birthday, encroaching the space of freshly mended ties with the second graders, while she holds the hand of your very own mother. Then – you...I felt how my embarrassment was about to reflux the Fanta bubbles along the esophagus, intimidated with the encounter of tooth-picked sandwiches in my stomach. A mechanical “ma... ma” pinched the air and vacuumed all the noisy bugs of children's play into a bubble of laughter.

Deprived from the fluctuations of anger and forgiveness, the doll sits in the corner of a childhood bedroom and observes my recollections with the solemn empowerment of her machine cast belly button.

In the womb of a hot spring, enveloped in the dampness of tearing cedar trees, my fingers find an onyx like rock. Its deep darkness grows on my wrinkled palm, pulling a string of existential questions about motherhood and creativity. How far can humanity go in the curiosity to imitate life and to breed its own kind from artificial wombs? Ectogenesis pokes the horizon of science and raises the debate not with what is not known but with what we know. I am that. And I'm something beyond the determined, measured and monitored - a connection with an intention.

The black onyx - I leave beside the spring. Its accumulated warmth melts the way through snow and ice, traveling towards its return. To the ground - where it belongs.

Photo by Bogdan Darev