Dollhouse
Group show
Curated by Jessica Libor
February 1 to March 1, 2025
Artists:
Abigail Walecki, Alayne Sahar, Antonietta Kies, Athena Parella, Caressa Layne, Catherine Haverkamp, Corie Steinbrink, Emma Hapner, Erin E Freeman, Esther Van Oui, Gabriella Papale, Gabrielle Tito, Jade To, Jessica Libor, Jillian Collins, Josie Gearhart, Julien Tomasello, Kirsten Holt Beitler, Lauren Rosenblum, Lauren Voigt, Leah Mitchell, Lillian Supanich, Mariah Cameron Scee, Megan Emily Ely, Sonia Vasquez, Symantha Jones, Trevor Wade Thomas, Yerkezhan Abuova
Tiny magic in miniature rooms. Mirroring homes and strange occurrences. Beautiful dolls who come to life. Building a dream and building a world, master of a domain within our control. Can we visit the dollhouse of our childhood? Can we build a life size version of our dream space today? Dreams, hauntings, nutcrackers, playthings and exquisite miniatures are the theme of this unique exhibition. To enter the dollhouse is to enter a world suspended—perfected, contained, and yet forever haunted by the absence of its maker.
Above artwork: , Honeynut by Athena Parella
Curatorial Statement:
The dollhouse is more than a child’s plaything. It is a site of fantasy and fixation, a miniature theater of domesticity where control, imagination, and identity converge. In Dollhouse, Era Contemporary presents a group exhibition of 30 visionary artists whose works explore themes of interior life—both architectural and emotional—through the lens of scale, nostalgia, and symbolic storytelling.
Drawing from historical traditions of cabinet of curiosities, Victorian shadow boxes, and handcrafted dioramas, the exhibition situates the dollhouse as a metaphor: for the curated self, for memory made physical, for the fragile facades of femininity and domestic bliss. But it is also a portal. These works invite us to shrink down and slip behind the tiny curtains—into spaces where memory flickers, where time loops, where toys watch back.
Haunted ballerinas, enchanted parlors, spectral nurseries, porcelain bodies, and sugar-spun dreams populate this show, invoking a sensibility at once delicate and uncanny. While some artists employ literal miniatures or toy motifs, others abstract the dollhouse into psychological interiors: compositions that speak to the tension between safety and captivity, desire and design.
In a world increasingly dominated by digital scale and abstraction, the return to the small, the crafted, the ornamental, and the emotionally resonant feels both radical and tender. Dollhouse asks: What happens when we re-enter these rooms as adults? What ghosts or wishes live there still? In a world too large to grasp, we retreat to the small—to the knowable, the arranged, the spellbound.
Welcome to the Dollhouse.
About the Curator:
Jessica Libor (b. 1987) is an American artist whose work explores themes of feminine identity and the transformative power of storytelling in the creation of personal mythology. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2014 and has pursued further classical training at the Grand Central Atelier and the Florence Academy of Art.
Based in Philadelphia, Libor has maintained an active studio practice since completing her MFA. Her artistic vision is deeply informed by narrative and symbolic traditions, drawing particular inspiration from global fairy tales—a recurring motif throughout her work. Artist residencies have played a pivotal role in this exploration; in 2022 and 2023, she participated in several residencies in Scotland and France, experiences that enriched her engagement with myth and folklore.
In 2023, Libor presented her work in two solo exhibitions: her international debut at La Serre Wangari in Paris, France, and a stateside show at Look Listen Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. She was also selected to exhibit in the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York City in 2025.
Her work is held in private collections internationally and has been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Independence Seaport Museum, the Louisiana Art and Science Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Masonic Library and Museum. In addition to her visual art practice, she is the host of The Creative Heroine Podcast, where she explores the intersection of creativity, storytelling, and the feminine spirit.
