This series of twelve 24"x56" prints uses American Girl Dolls to explore themes of cultural and phenotypic identity in Colonial America.  These images extrapolate ideas about biological identification, issues surrounding the colonial gaze, and methods of cultural assimilation from texts by Alice Wexler, Malek Alloula and Lisa Nakamura.

In 1764 American Girl Doll Kaya, a fictitious member of the Nimi'ipuu (Nez Perce) tribe, lived nomadically in the Pacific Northwest.   Fictitious American Girl Dolls Addy (African, escaped slave), Caroline (caucasian, post-colonial), and Josefina (Chicano, lives in NM under Mexican rule) are relative contemporaries of Kaya.  In this project, Addy, Caroline and Josefina wear Kaya’s clothes and are placed into dioramas of plants and topographic features native to Oregon, Idaho and Washington.  The simulated environments include accessories, housing and animals sold by American Girl Company as part of Kaya’s imagined life.  The 12 images consist of four of each character with backdrops that correspond to winter, summer, spring and fall.