Jimena Albert

The Beauty in the Beast

2020

This is a hand-sewn fabric doll with a fur hood that gives her the powers of her spirit animal; a beast, her guide.

This guide appears as she explores her dark emotions, her sadness, her fear, her anger, her frustrations. She inadvertently summons the beast because she feels no love, because she ran out of ways of escaping her pain, of feeling less lonely.

Her pain pierces through her as a light that she cannot control. Her pain turns into her most trusted weapon. And her rage scares her. It makes her recoil in fear of her own image, the image she was shown by others. The image that was built by others; the ones that cannot see the beast.

The beast turns into her ally. She becomes one with the beast and she can control her pain now. The fear is gone, and she can finally step into the darkness knowing there is an armor around her. There is a spirit embracing her and holding her hand in the journey. Her own true spirit, that shields her from the shape given to her by others. The shape she holds inside, that she built herself. Her power.