Phantasmagoria: defined as a shifting series of phantasms, illusions, or deceptive appearances, as in a dream or as created by the imagination.
The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s first online exhibition of 2024, Ghosts Still Haunt These Walls, features works from Barbara Ringer’s series, Phantasmagoria, which pays homage to the difficulty that comes from meditating on negative past experiences. The exhibition is an invitation to sit with and acknowledge the power and possibility of change that not only comes from experiencing the artworks’ subjects, but also from the feelings they inspire when past and present interact in the imagination.
In much of Ringer’s previous work, dolls are used in lieu of people; they assume the role of the observed, an often vulnerable and depersonalized representation of the Self. In Phantasmagoria, dolls serve as tangible manifestations of the woman they “belong” to, an extension of her psyche as she is left alone to face recollections of the past, all the while attempting to hide from the menacing, shadowy figures that surround her. This tension between doll and human is apparent in Sciophobia (2021), where human arms extend from a mannequin, with a passive painted-on expression in direct contrast to the desperate gesture of hands as they clutch a pillow to her chest. The woman is notably shielded from view, yet she has begun to break from the mold of the doll — plastic giving way to flesh. She pulls at the pillow, suggesting resistance to the painful tearing away from what once brought her comfort.
The artist evokes the idea that the doll is not separate from the memories attached to it, and their very likeness is a remembrance of darker, more impactful experiences. Memories warp with time; baby dolls replace the adult human form perhaps as a way to soften painful experiences in one’s recollection, or to heighten the striking nature of Ringer’s subject matter. Through the use of dolls, Ringer acknowledges the way they are oftentimes tools for children to self-soothe and process the world around them. Like many, the artist found solace in her doll as a friend, a mouthpiece, a conduit for processing things she could not understand. The doll was a mirror for her in her childhood, but she is no longer that child. Removed from the environment of her youth, she is now tasked with facing the very same dolls she confided in, as they have joined the shadows that haunt her.
Ghosts Still Haunt These Walls fosters a space in which one can sit in the uncomfortable feeling of remembering what one would rather remain unearthed, and serves as a reminder that years later, when time has corroded memories into muted phantasms, they have never left us and must be faced.
Statement and curation by Amayah Novela
