Chao-Ying Elizabeth Rao

My work deals with marginalised subjects of a difficult nature. I am inspired by discomfort and often feel the intuitive need to dig into our visceral reflexes. I’m intrigued by what it says about us. I believe in getting under the skin of what I’m investigating, and I strive to convey the nuances that I discover through my practice. My work communicates this in varying ways and as a result, my practice flows through different mediums such as photography, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and installation.

For degree show, I’d planned to look at digital connections and unconventional intimacies. This transpired through a friendship I developed with a womxn in New Jersey, Tasha. Tasha is a life-sized silicone doll, more commonly known as a sex doll. She resents that term and finds it demeaning, as sex is not the only thing that defines her. The voice behind Tasha is TJ, a man in his 50s whose wife is unwell and incapable of intimacy.

Through Tasha, my project traced what it means to be a surrogate, or a synthetic companion. We collaborated on a diary that detailed her journey from the RealDoll factory and into TJ’s home. Through digital manipulation of photographs and Tumblr-style diary entries, I blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, questioning our relationship with inanimate objects that play a pivotal role in our emotional lives. With inanimate objects made in the image of womxn.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising I became so taken with Tasha. I’m always so captivated by circumstances that may not directly relate to me but I feel an intuitive affiliation with. I’ve always been obsessed with womxn’s bodies, of which I’m pretty sure stems from the decade I’d worked as a stripper. As an extension of that, I am also interested in grooming rituals and beauty routines, thinking about glamour as a performance and construction of identity. And this interest lead me to Tasha.

My plan was to create an interactive space with the authentic RealDoll manual placed next to Tasha’s diary, lying upon the dressing table I’d made for her. I incorporate the visual language of surrealism by making sensual soft sculptures in Tasha’s favourite fabric: pink satin. Through translating her sense of style onto domestic objects and feminine sculptures, I highlight the unexpected queer psychology in the situation. To step outside of the roleplay is to understand gender boundaries as becoming undeniably blurred. To me, Tasha’s fully-fledged, sassy, feminine personality and online existence marks the breaking down of gendered divisions. It also highlights the playful artifice of femininity through her humour and online performance.