Art student explores gender dysphoria through Barbie’s form

Nim Patterson’s work “They” is an exploration of gender through the manipulation of Barbie’s form. The artist themself acts as part of the piece, continuing to create as viewers observe. Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM

The annual student art exhibition at North Island College in Comox Valley has wrapped up, and CHLY and CVOX met at the studio with one student to hear their experience of exhibiting their own work, a series titled “They”.

Nim Patterson is a multimedia artist who has explored mediums such as drawing and photography in the past, and through a recent sculpture assignment fell in love with manipulating porcelain casts of one iconic form.

“With this process, which I've absolutely fallen in love with, I pour liquid into plaster moulds that I've submerged the Barbie parts into. And then the slip cast, liquid porcelain hardens and when I open up the mould I'm given the perfect imprint of whatever I cast in plaster, and so then I'm able to take out all of the limbs individually and fuse them together and reassemble Barbie in whatever way that desire. And not a lot of people sculpt with porcelain, so being able to explore it in my own way and find new ways of using the material has been very satisfying,” Patterson said.

The work is a vast exploration of gender identity, capturing over a hundred moments of Patterson’s own experience. It all began with an assignment to make multiples cast from a mould, but Patterson wasn’t interested in perfectly replicated forms. They were inspired by a past student’s work who manipulated and deflated the form of a rubber duck, but it took them weeks to settle on what form they wanted to recreate and disrupt.

Patterson found that viewers would each point out a figure they identified with personally, and that it was always different for each patron. Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM

“And then it finally came to me where I was like if there were one thing that I would want to make a cast of and then recreate and remake, it would be my own body. And the idea of recreating myself and recasting my own form really led to using Barbie as my subject because she's not only a female figure that I would be able to cast and replicate, but it also symbolically really represents how we're taught as children, what we're supposed to be like when we grow up. And I just felt like that was a really powerful way to express my own gender dysphoria, and just the non-binary and trans experience,” the artist shared.

The work itself is the display of more than one hundred porcelain figures that have been cast from the form of a Barbie, then warped, cut and altered to represent what Patterson felt in their body in the moment they were creating. Patterson themself added a performative element to the piece, steadily continuing to craft at their station while in drag throughout the span of the exhibition. 

“So the performance element really kind of came from the last time I had the critique during the semester, and my professor had been like, ‘you making it is the piece,’ and just made that as a comment, and I was like, ‘no, this is real. That's exactly how it is,’” they said.

Patterson explained that without the performance, people may see the forms as simply Barbie dolls, and that the artist being present, creating and reassembling the forms while dressed in drag honours the concept of the project, and draws the viewers to notice the significance of both gender and the queer experience that is expressed by the work.

Something the artist found remarkable about being present throughout the exhibition was witnessing their audience experiencing and relating to their work.

“It was really powerful. I found that everyone saw a very specific Barbie that they honed in on and they resonated with the most, which was really surprising, the versatility in that. I thought that maybe there would be one or two that were specific favorites, but no, everyone came in and they would just point to one I would not have expected at all. And they were like, ‘that is me. Like, that is it. I am this.’ So I never would've expected just how diverse the relation that people were having to the project and that different connection that they would create,” Patterson said.

Patterson also felt that the piece acted as an entry point for members of the general public who may not understand queerness; when viewers realized that the project embodied experiences of gender dysphoria and trauma, they took the time to observe the piece and ponder what it meant.

“And I felt like that was really special because we don't often get that experience where people can just quietly process like that in front of you. So that was powerful,” they said.

“They” by Nim Patterson includes sculptural and performative elements. Photos: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM

Patterson said that their initial goals for the project were to create 50 Barbies, but they very quickly surpassed that, and are now at 153 and counting. The project is ongoing, and their new goal is one thousand; a feat they plan to achieve by buying a kiln and setting up a home studio if they need to. Their next semester will be focused on meeting academic requirements for the Fine Arts Diploma, and Patterson jokes that they will be making Barbies between essays to stay sane. After that, they will likely continue toward a masters degree. 

As far as where the project will go next, that path is unclear.

“[I’ve] never been much of a planner. I'm just doing it because I love it and if they end up being somewhere that's not just in my bedroom piled up on every shelf that I can possibly get in there, then that would be really lovely. Having them in some sort of gallery or exhibition would be incredible purely because the more people who resonate with this project and who can see a sliver of themselves in it, just brings me so much joy and I just feel like we need more of that in the world right now,” they said.

More information about North Island College’s Fine Arts Diploma is available online at nic.bc.ca.

Patterson's art can be found on their Instagram page, @NimPattersonArt.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with CVOX.