Tagreed Darghouth is a courageous artist who takes on complex, difficult and controversial themes. Her new body of works on display at the Tabari Art Space in Dubai, entitled For Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll takes on the theme of feminine beauty in contemporary society and how it relates to the male point of view. Inspired by encounters on the streets of her city Beirut, by international mass media and social media, which all continue to reinforce limiting visions of gender, Darghouth, with her paintings, creates a critical narrative. Faces, bodies, mannequins, skulls, oversized lips, the brushstrokes of Darghouth hide and reveal at the same time, facilitating a new way of looking at things. There is a comparison between two different myths, also divided vastly by time, one is the Greek myth of Pandora and the other is the modern Barbie doll. Despite the passage of centuries, women remain encaged in preset categories. Pandora was the first mortal woman, her beauty synonymous with peril. Barbie, a modern icon, where the peril has been domesticated by a stereotype of plastic, objectified and standardised beauty. An image of woman that becomes, as Darghouth says, “…the toy all little girls want to have, the body all women desire to achieve and the fantasy all men love to embrace.”
