Emotions explored through dark dolls exhibit.
Karen Justl's exhibition Dolls in the Playground is currently on display at Gallery 1313.
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
Some people don't like dolls. In fact, some people hate them and artist Karen Justl is capitalizing on that emotion with her latest work.
Justl calls her creations 'creatures', little dolls that she constructs using found objects and thrift store buys. She strips them, rips their hair out and dumps them in wax. They wear dark clothing and their expressions are definite, but faint on their faces.
"There was this really kind of creepy process to them," she said with a giggle.
The series of creatures, titled Dolls in the Playground, contains 20 different characters with sets and props, all with an air that they could come to life, she said.
"I was looking at caricature, facial expression and body language, and trying to apply an inner life force to these little creatures," Justl said.
When she started making the dolls in graduate school, she said not everyone reacted well to them.
"I started to look at why were people reacting in a way that they were kind of offended by this," Justl said. "And I thought that was kind of neat, I might be doing something right."
When people are faced with her dolls, Justl said she hopes to stir up the feeling some people had as children that the dolls may come to life when you turn your back.
"As humans, we look at objects and things and, especially when you are a kid, you apply all of this life to it," she said. "So I tried to conjure that up."
A few of Justl's dolls are on display at Gallery 1313 in an exhibition called Relations, curated by gallery director Phil Anderson, which is about relationships. There are 11 artists in the exhibition and all take a unique view of the importance and mechanics of relationships. When thinking about relationships, Justl did some philosophical research on the doll itself.
"That's one of the first relationships we have, whether it is with dolls or with toys, the things that we can have power over," she said. "It's the beginning of that kind of philosophical play that we have with others. It's the point where you are experimenting with who you are."
Justl, originally from Winnipeg, Man., moved to Toronto to work and attend graduate school. She now lives in Parkdale and in addition to installation art like her creatures, Justl teaches at the Toronto School of Art in the digital lab and in the continuing studies department at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Relations runs from Feb. 3 to 28 at Gallery 1313, at 1313 Queen St. W.