Dolly 027
2009 Oil on canvas 30 x 30cm (11.81 x 11.81inch)
Provenance
Artist Collection, 2026
About The Work
Since postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulation and simulacra have radically destabilized the boundary between the original and the copy. In this framework, the “original without origin” emerges, where copies do not merely reproduce reality but create new layers of it. In contemporary culture, people increasingly treat originals and reproductions as equivalent, a tendency that reflects the profound shift in thought inaugurated by postmodernism.
Within this context, the “Hello, Dolly!” series reflects a distinctly modern vision: the belief that human beings, through scientific intervention, can bring forth entirely new forms of life. The clone itself is not simply a scientific experiment but a pivotal question of the 21st century, prompting us to reconsider human existence and value. Dolly, the first cloned mammal (originally coded ‘6LL3’), was renamed after the singer Dolly Parton, moving from the realm of biotechnology into that of popular culture. Strikingly, the sheep—long a biblical symbol of collective human nature and sacrifice—became the first cloned subject, placing Dolly at the intersection of science, religion, and mass culture.
Just as scientists employed advanced technology to create Dolly, I have engaged diverse art-historical languages to recreate her through repetition. Cézanne’s structural vision reduced Dolly’s form to its essential units; Andy Warhol’s strategy of serial repetition emphasized the infinite proliferation of the clone; Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s wrapping aesthetics served as a metaphor for the veiled truth of artificial life; and André Derain’s vivid colors evoked both the vitality and the unease of a replicated being. Each artistic reference expands Dolly into new interpretive fields, transforming her from a biological specimen into a cultural and aesthetic icon.
The Dolly series is therefore not a mere visualization of a scientific event but a meditation on the blurred boundary between creation and imitation in both life and art. As a “second original,” Dolly embodies the paradox of the simulacrum—at once a copy and a source. Through her image, I seek to reveal that art, like cloning, does not simply replicate but generates new realities and meanings.
- 2004
Dolly
