Melissa Huang’s ‘No Doll’ confronts femininity and societal expectations at Whitespace

The movie Barbie debuted in theaters in the summer of 2023. Featuring a quirky, feminist backstory about the iconic doll, the movie follows Stereotypical Barbie as she grapples with the picture-perfect fictional life, the feminine ideals she symbolizes and the unnerving reality of life for women. Throughout this tale, Barbie learns about the oppressive structure of patriarchy and ultimately prevails through the power of female camaraderie. It was so good.

Now, two years later, artist Melissa Huang evokes a similar allegory in her solo exhibition No Doll at Whitespace Gallery. The exhibition features self-portraits composed in paint, sculpture and projected videos that center another iconic doll — the china doll. Using the doll as a visual motif, the artist questions if unencumbered self-expression is even possible.

China dolls or, more palatably, porcelain dolls, are iconic for their glossy, white skin, cherubic cheeks and glazed hair. Much like Barbie, their portrayal is loaded, representing an idealized image of womanhood rather than a realistic one. It is exactly this iconic yet troublesome image that disturbs the self-portraits in Huang’s exhibition. 

Take, for example, the piece titled Doll Logic (2025). A spliced portrait rests against a carmine ground. Fractured into pieces, the portrait is cobbled together with equal parts human — Huang herself — and porcelain doll. With jittering edges and irregular splicing, the portrait is a nearly uncontained mass akin to a frozen computer screen. The areas that depict Huang’s face are neutral, perhaps even apathetic, offering a blank screen showing no emotion — a fitting expression as it perfectly matches the lifeless, unblinking eyes of the doll. 

Here, the real juxtaposes the hyperreal in a battle for surface area. We think of Huang’s pieces as “real” because they reference a living human, but the doll’s pieces reflect some social construction of what a girl should look like. Is that any less real? Seen together, these two appear on equal footing. They seem to ask if Huang can ever be divorced from these projected images — can any woman?

Elsewhere, the doll is less explicit, but its presence lingers in implication. Doll House (2025) features what appears to be a sort of Barbie dream house.

A tall, open-faced dollhouse is replete with multiple rooms, including a kitchen, living room, bedroom, attic and two balconies. Within the confines of this miniature scene, partial portraits of Huang cramp, pushing against the boundaries of their tiny space. 

I find it fitting that the most unobstructed portraits of Huang are found in the kitchen and living room — for what are the social expectations of women other than to be providers, of food, of company and of service? 

Upstairs, things get messier. Within the bedroom a head is lying on its side, a reflected image of itself superimposed on top. It is difficult to discern the two separate renderings, as the portraits are almost entirely obfuscated by manic scribbles. 

The attic is in complete chaos. Disjointed facial features, hands and shapes erupt from the space. Here, Huang seems to say that only through frenetic and private implosions can one escape the confines of their space. While this ultimately results in the dissolution of a recognizable portrait, the pieces are still identifiably human. Something of the self remains.

The exhibition continues with many other portraits, all of which feature a spliced and chaotic abstraction. While some of the portraits, such as Cloud Baby (2025), are set against landscapes — a setting I found difficult to reconcile within the metaphor of the dollhouse — close inspection of some pieces, such as Waiting to Meet You (2025), left me wanting more exciting or intricate manipulation of the paint. This exhibition successfully communicates its message. 

Part of Huang’s message is dire — escaping social constructs, particularly as a woman, is nearly impossible to do and come out intact — but the message is not without encouragement. In Huang’s world, she asserts that there are many ways to piece together a portrait. As with the opening shots of Barbie, which humorously mimics the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, dolls can be sites of re-magination but also rage. Now that we have the tools to piece them back together, who knows what form they will take?

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Leia Genis is a trans artist and writer currently based in Atlanta. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Burnaway, Art Papers and Number: Inc. Genis is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and is also an avid cyclist with a competition history at the national level.