A circle of 26 gold-painted female dolls lies in rigid formation, hands and feet aligned, strings tethered to their ankle. surrounding a solitary boy seated in a child’s high chair. His hands are smeared with gold, implicating him as both witness and maker. The dolls radiate outward like spokes from a center that refuses innocence.

This sculpture confronts the aesthetics of control, complicity, and transformation. The gold, often a symbol of value or purity, here becomes a mask, a uniform, a residue of power. The strings suggest restraint or choreography, while the boy’s elevated position evokes both vulnerability and authority.

The phrase inscribed across the its three sides on the floor “This is a protest, disguised as a Sculpture" declares its intent without revealing its full target. Is it a protest against silence? Against the roles we are taught to perform?

By blending childhood imagery with ritualistic arrangement, the work asks: Who gets to paint the narrative? Who is bound by it? And what does it mean to resist, even when resistance is disguised?