The Dancing Doll part of Galatea exhibition. The series is based on life-like dolls that appear in literature, such as Olympia, in ETA Hoffmann’s The Sandmann and Eve in Villier de L’Isle Adam. The myth of Galatea is the story of an artwork or creature created by a male artist into an image of female perfection, a figure which cannot contradict or express opinions, which cannot feel, age or alter. The myth was popular in the 19th century. Liane Lang’s images of life-like dolls appear in the process of awakening, of life flowing slowly into the unliving form. Her imagining of the doll is a sensual engagement with the notion of sentience and intent entering an unliving body. Lang’s interest in the animacy of figurative sculpture and the ambiguity and psychological relationship to its presence and symbolism is carried through her practice in works with monuments, statuary and museum spaces. In these works she takes the device of posing wax works in museums as a device to animate space and examines the effect of this on the viewer’s perception.