‘I wanna be your dog’
light boxes & installation

The recent work of Carmen Arrabal is presented in the form of light boxes. The first serie of boxes, made in 2016, is part of the installation "I want to be your dog" created for the festival "Nation of Gondwana 2016".
Choosing the song "I wanna be your dog" as the starting point for the musical event, the theme revolves around the famous title of the Stooges.
In the installation, a central panel in wood evokes a fair decoration, with holes in which visitors can put their heads and be photographed in a burlesque setting. Decorated inspired by "Street-art" collages of black and white photocopy, with a mix of retro images of dogs and punk-rock musical references.

The ten light boxes that are part of the installation envelop this scene, hanging on two side panels.

The artist creates the boxes from old frames found in the Berlin flea markets, composing small scenes created mainly with toys (recycled, manipulated and transformed) and other objects or materials also found in the markets or on the street.

Toys become the protagonists of various playful, provocative and surrealist universes. Carmen Arrabal leads them to transgress the order of things, to forget their character "naïf" ... And so we find Playmobils shooting a porn movie (with a nod to Russ Meyer) or smoked dwarfs in a fantastic universe with references to the Sex Pistols song "Who killed Bambi?", as well as sadomasochists Barbies or Hello Kittys under psychotropics ...

In the boxes underground, she uses her own images and collages mixed with different anti-culture iconography.

Carmen Arrabal explores the new artistic format and currently works on a second series entitled "Subversive toys" which re-visits her previous themes.