BAMBI
Freakshow Pin-Ups
November 20th - December 19th, 2004
The Dollhaus presents the photography of BAMBI.
Visual artist and performer Bambi the Mermaid has created a
collection of images portraying fantastical creatures, grotesque
characters, auto-biographical scenes and fetish dreams in her
body of work called Freakshow Pin-Ups. Bambi's goal
in this work is to explore extreme elements of attraction
and repulsion that manifest themselves in both everyday
life and dramatic presentations. She places both her
self-image and her actual self on the line for these images by
appearing in each Pin-Up without modesty or vanity and in many
cases highlighting perceived flaws and grotesque deformities.
Drawing upon the backdrops of Coney Island, Las Vegas,
carny culture and down-trodden America, she has created
an almost-Technicolor tableaux of photographic images
in which she both stars and directs the process with the
assistance of a sympathetic photographer who has documented
all of the characters. Her challenge to traditional notions of
what elements create attraction, beauty, sexuality, and dominance
is played out in the images and characters as they interact with
other models or their surroundings. Frequently using masks and
animalistic elements to abstract the characters from her real-life
comely blonde figure. Recurring themes in her imagery are
freak shows, carnival life, lunacy, obsession, fetish, pornography,
sex work, and a lot of birds.
Bambi draws upon her years of real-life research in the roles of a
stripper, dominatrix, burlesque performer, fetish model, and freak show
act. Her concepts evolve from an emotional connection with a character
like the girl with lobster hands, a chicken-headed stripper, or a make-
up obsessed woman. She presents the characters with both empathy
and an unflinching eye to what most people would consider flaws or
outright mutations. She celebrates all from freaks of nature to freaks
of imagination and the fetishes that spring from internal desires for
extreme and unique beauty.
The presentation of the shocking characters in a matter-of-fact point
of view adds authenticity to scenes like a dog-headed prostitute
waiting at the window for her next trick or a real-life beauty posing
on the beach with her pornographic blow-up doll twin. Bambi treats
these characters with a novelty no greater than a siliconed stripper or
a trussed dominatrix that have become so familiar in popular culture
that they are virtually the norm rather than the fetish. Her fetish
icons generate both lust and discomfort.
Bambi's images have been seen in solo and group showing in New York
City art galleries and a book containing more than fifty different freak
pin-ups is planned.