MÓNICA VÉLEZ
As a girl I collected boxed dolls I never played with. “They will lose their beauty,” my mother warned. Her idea didn’t bother me at first and I made my room an altar of plastic beauties. Dolls were the objects of my desire, untouchable but wanted. Then I went through a stage when I hated them. I took them out of their boxes and subjected them to a range of punishments. I found myself shooting them with a camera: some untouched, some disrobed, some broken, some disheveled, but all alluring. I became obsessed with the construction of beauty and the role of plastic in women’s beautification rituals.
