The intensely researched works of Canadian artist Sara Cwynar (b.1985) use film, photography, installation and found imagery to interrogate the male gaze and gender expectations. Drawing on her background in graphic design, she highlights the visual strategies of consumerism and the psychological impact of our image-saturated culture. Her ‘Doll Index’ series of large-scale digital collages is based on a collection of photographs of French fashion dolls from the 1950s that she found in the archives of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York – each one dressed in high society attire from the 1700s and 1800s. Doll Index, 1811-1950features a doll from 1811 overlaid with a grid of white lines and sticking tape to which Cwynar has added multiple smaller images of consumer items: underwear, kitchenware, accessories and the like. The work invites reflections on the commodification of the female body and how contemporary consumerism subconsciously shapes beauty and lifestyle expectations.