Photos: Abandoned Barbie dolls turn up in works of art, folk tales, poems
S Devaki, a homemaker from Thiruvananthapuram, is using her grandchildren’s abandoned Mattel dolls to recreate scenes from her favourite works of art, epics, poems and folk tales.
Homemaker S Devaki from Thiruvananthapuram found a cache of Barbie and Ken dolls abandoned by her grandchildren, during a spell of home renovation. She decided to use them to tell traditional Indian tales. She now recreates scenes from epics, poems, folk tales and classical works of art, in elaborate tableaus built around the dolls.(Photo courtesy: S Devaki)
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Devaki’s latest creation draws on the Ramayana. It shows Sita pointing to a deer in the forests of Panchvati, asking Ram and Laxman to capture it for her as a pet. Since November, Devaki has been sharing her work on Instagram, @devaki_palazhi. She makes all the backdrops, props and costumes herself, and makes the jewellery from odds and ends.(Photo courtesy; S Devaki)
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This tableau depicts Matsyagandhi and the sage Parashara in a boat, about to embark on the journey that will culminate in the birth of the sage Vyasa, who first compiled the Mahabharata. As more people come upon Devaki’s work, on local news platforms and online, they have begun sending her their unused dolls too. Devaki now has a collection of 21. (Photo courtesy: S Devki)
This tableau is based on a Malayalam poem by Kumaran Asan. It depicts Chandalabhikshuki, a lower-caste beggar, asking Upagupta, one of Buddha’s disciples, for water. It’s not easy to get it all just right, Devaki says. It can take up to two weeks to perfect a scene.(Photo courtesy: S Devaki)
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Dressed in lace and tulle, this doll has been repurposed to depict Menaka, the most beautiful of the mythical apsaras. The first thing Devaki did when starting to create her tableaux, she says laughing, was to dye all the dolls’ hair black.(Photo courtesy: S Devaki)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
