09/08/2007. Venice. Biennale day one: Japan, Tabaimo. Dolefullhouse.

This was by far one of my favorite exhibits in the Italian pavilion in the Biennale. Dolefullhouse was an animation of the interior of a dollhouse and a pair of hands. The majority of the animation was of these hands putting material objects into the rooms of the dollhouse. After a while the house starts pulsing with veins and you start to understand that it is an organic object in and of itself. Then the hands start itching themselves rapidly and very intensely. It’s almost an impulsive itching. It’s like the itching feeling is tearing you apart inside. And it is. Because then the hands start itching the inside of the house as if it was the body of the hands.

This piece obviously had a lot to do about the consumption of material objects and our incessant need to fill our lives with petty objects. And yet it is something that we all do and cannot escape from. I think this is why Tabaimo decided to make the dollhouse symbolic of our own bodies because we can’t escape from ourselves. It is the one thing that we forever have to live with. Our bodies are made for consumption. We consume food and water just to sustain our lives. We also consume (not literally) material objects, not for sustainability but for personal comfort. We do not need 500-dollar shoes or 300-dollar suits. To actually keep ourselves alive, we NEED very little. But we choose to obtain these objects out of want or desire. I think that this is something that the artist is really trying to convey to the audience, the difference between bodily consumption versus material consumption.