By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
While the masses are swooning over the "Barbie" movie, a master's of art student at Fort Hays State University has a different take on women in society and Barbie as an icon.
One of the most popular pieces in Kailin Nielsen's master's of fine arts exhibition, "Forbidden Female," on display now through Aug. 18 at the Moss Thorns Gallery of Art on the FHSU campus, is titled "Ideal Cannibalism."
It depicts a young woman biting the head off of a Barbie doll.
Nielsen said she has always been interested in women and women's culture as a subject for her artwork. The Barbie piece was painted in 2021, long before the movie hype.
"Barbie, when I was young, was this figure that we all aspired to be...having these beautiful body types and perfect proportions. That was stereotypical of what a woman should aspire to be," she said.
"As I have aged, my body doesn't look like that, and a lot of other females' bodies don't look like that. A lot of times, there's a lot of negativity around the female body. That creates a lot of body dysmorphia. I thought of Barbie as an example of how that shouldn't be the social standard."
She said the painting exhibits anger against society's female standards.
"I'm very interested in how the social media climate reacts to things and how our society reacts to things," she said," whether it's women's bodies, women's sexuality, what we are consuming as in food or what we are buying and marketing tactics."
Nielsen was in the middle of her master's work when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
"I saw people reacting positively and negatively to women's bodies," she said. "I wouldn't say I was with one or the other, but it was very interesting to see how society reacts to women's bodies and to see how society reacts to women as a whole."
Nielsen repeatedly uses images of fruit and food in her artwork, perhaps most prominently in her piece, "Debauchery."
"I wanted to talk about women indulging in their sexuality, what they are buying, and everything else and not feel gluttonous about it," she said. "But at the same time, I wanted to talk about social media and how they are so obsessive."
She said she believes women's indulgence and sexuality are often perceived as taboo.
"People are very turned off by seeing female breasts or female anatomy at all," Nielsen said. "I view that compared to men wearing a swimsuit without a shirt. I wonder how society could be so corrupted to think that a woman's body is something that has to be covered."
In addition to paintings and mixed media, Nielsen's exhibit also includes a video of a performance art piece.
She smeared chocolate over a large mirror and incorporated into the chocolate symbols of feminity, including makeup, beauty products, extensions and jewelry.
She slowly dug the chocolate and items away to show her reflection.
"Although we buy into all of these things that we think or society tells us are going to make us prettier and more attractive to the male gaze or the female gaze," she said, "I wanted to show that no matter what, under all that sickening facade, it's just us still."
Nielsen graduated in May. She will be the lead drawing and painting professor at Doane University in Nebraska.