NEWS: My Barbie Life – From Grief To Relief @ Orbis Project Space

Many of us at NARC. still feel the loss of our contributor and friend Craig Puranen Wilson, who lost his life to cancer in 2018 and whose creativity and positivity was a real inspiration to anyone who met him. His wife Krista, an artist and designer whose creative work spans everything from music to fashion, turned to art in an effort to understand the grief she was feeling. The result is a photo exhibition, My Barbie Life: From Grief to Relief, which launches at Orbis Project Space in Newcastle’s Commercial Union House this month under Krista’s Urban & Eastern Productions moniker.

While taking a break at her parents’ house in her native Finland, Krista came across her old Barbie doll and began taking photos with it, depicting Barbie doing the everyday tasks and living the life that Krista knew. “My little moments with my Barbie proved to be exactly what I needed. A moment spent ‘playing’ again, not needing to think about anything else going on in my life. This little doll gave me a respite from my grief and soon I found her to be following around with my daily life, doing what I was doing. She was going to art galleries, doing shopping, meeting up with friends and doing occasional modelling.”

The photo exhibition is at once a charming and innocent reminisce on childhood joys, as well as a poignant and affecting tale of coping with grief.

My Barbie Life: From Grief To Relief by Urban & Eastern Productions is at Orbis Project Space, Newcastle from Monday 19^th-Friday 30^th July