Marginalia - Made in China Made in Colombia - Colombia
Reading time: 2 minutes
07.10.2024
An archive of toys found in markets filled with past lives, a fabulation on imperfection, humor, and, above all, on time and its discoveries. Sebastián Villamil presents us with his ‘Museum of Fantasy’ for Marginalia 102
Fantasía is a project that began in 2014 as a result of an encounter I had with a toy. It was Princess Aurora, Sleeping Beauty. She was hanging alongside other toys in a warehouse in the San Victorino neighborhood of Bogotá, where you can find anything: Virgins, rosaries, piñatas, trash cans, low-quality plastic items, notebooks, USBs loaded with music, posters, ashtrays, party supplies, costumes for children and adults. Her face, unlike the princess in the movie, was disfigured—her eyes were crooked, her lipstick smeared around her mouth, as if after a passionate kiss or like the Joker. Her gaze was lost, her smile stiff, her arms in an awkward position, and her feet protruded from her dress like hooves. Her hair, No. 5 yellow instead of golden like the sun, had patches the color of her skin, signs of baldness. I bought this toy and took it home. I started visiting these types of markets more frequently and focused my search on toys with similar characteristics. I began to name and collect them.
As the collection grew, I found new ways to classify them: amputated soldiers, decapitated superheroes, chromatic aberrations, G.I. Joes with pink skin, as if with third-degree burns, crooked eyes, different qualities of plastic, different qualities of copies—from AAA copies to copies of copies, reinterpretations, hybrids: Mickey Mouse with a baby’s body, Chuckie from Rugrats with Mickey’s body, Batman with Spider-Man’s hand, and an Ariel mermaid that looked like a viperfish. I was captivated by the eeriness of these toys, which range from subtle defects to anomalies in their bodies and faces. So far, I have collected more than 1,500 figures. Although they are mass-produced, each one is unique, and each of their imperfections hints at what they are not. I have selected a set of 15 images that reflect the different strategies I’ve used to study these objects. The selection includes music videos, gifs, drawings, and images from my book Fantasía, published by Jardín Publicaciones in 2018.
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07.12.2024
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