ART

Your Beauty Is Your Own

Dollhouse—a.k.a. the multidisciplinary artists Stevens Añazco, who was a 2021 mentee of Space for Change and Giant Artists, and Qori Camargo—present the self-portrait series “On Display.”

The project, Añazco explains, is influenced by pre-colonial South American Incan art and European art history, “analyzing the two by appropriating contrasting approaches to art-making and adopting the role of subject as reclamation.”

words and photographs by Dollhouse

We created “On Display” through Dollhouse, an artistic partnership we formed in 2014. (“Doll” is used by trans women of color as both an identifier and a term of endearment, often representing community and safety.) With shared life paths as artists of trans experience and Indigenous South American descent, Qori and I use our desire to perform and document art-making as a tool to engage with our communities as well as audiences at large.

“On Display” highlights the intimacy of beauty rituals, with both of us draping and fitting each other into garments, applying each other’s makeup, and styling each other’s hair. Nodding to a Euro-centric approach to displaying art in museums, particularly of stolen artifacts, we evoke a sterile exhibition space with eye-level foam-core and a mirror. We place ourselves on display both in front of and behind the wall, their gestures and poses informed by precolonial South American performances. Contrasting styling choices throughout the story engage with beautifying rituals in both ancestral and contemporary ways.

In staying true to the ethos of Dollhouse, “On Display” encourages viewers to question their own traditional practices and how they occupy space within the communities they belong to. —Stevens Añazco & Qori Camargo