Emilie Steele is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stockholm, Sweden, who creates handcrafted posable art dolls. Each doll’s body is first sculpted in clay, then silicone molds are made, and the pieces are cast in resin. Steele also makes all the clothes, wigs, and accessories by hand. These are far from your ordinary dolls, notable for their enchanting combination of beauty and the grotesque; with their exaggerated or duplicated features—such as rodent-esque teeth, blacked-out eyes, and multiple heads and limbs—they take on a surreal quality that both attracts and repels the viewer. Steele describes them as “abject figures” that long to be human, hovering in the uncomfortable borderlands of consciousness, expressing traits that are universal but not socially accepted. “Displaying constructed dolls can remind us that we, ourselves, are artificial and constructed,” Steele writes. “Casting identical dolls from the same mold also makes contradicting attributes possible within the same character,” thereby expressing the fluid nature of identity. Visit Steele’s Instagram for more.

Images © Emilie Steele

Via Cannibal Fairy