Helen CHADWICK British, 1953-1996
Birth of Barbie, 1993
Cibachrome photograph
Unique in size
Unique in size
40 x 26 cm
Birth of Barbie shows a bright red, blonde-haired Barbie emerging from a lump of raw meat, shaped to look like a vulva. Barbie’s white teeth, peroxide hair and baby blue...
Birth of Barbie shows a bright red, blonde-haired Barbie emerging from a lump of raw meat, shaped to look like a vulva.
Barbie’s white teeth, peroxide hair and baby blue eyes glow against a bloody crimson background, her smile and stare full of
Stepford Wife-menace. Chadwick makes an explicit connection between the images of women that contemporary Western
society teaches from an early age are acceptable, and the bodily reality of the reproductive process.
Barbie’s white teeth, peroxide hair and baby blue eyes glow against a bloody crimson background, her smile and stare full of
Stepford Wife-menace. Chadwick makes an explicit connection between the images of women that contemporary Western
society teaches from an early age are acceptable, and the bodily reality of the reproductive process.
Exhibitions
Part 1: Matrescence, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 15 November - 21 December 2019Liberties, Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall, UK, 2017
Bristle: Hair and Hegemony, Drogheda’s Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland, 2017
Presence, Gimpel Fils, London, 2005
Literature
Royal Academy of Arts Magazine, No. 166, Spring 2025. Illustrated page 19
Amber Husain, Meat Love: An ideology of the flesh. Published by MACK, 2023. Illustrated, page 80
Leonie O'Dwyer, Helen Chadwick: a critical catalogue raisonné, Leeds 2012 (illustrated, page 158). Griselda Pollock (ed.),The Sacred & the Feminine: Imagination & Sexual Difference (New Encounters: Arts, Cultures, Concepts), London 2007 (p. ix).
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