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A jaguar's face gazes with human eyes. A fierce red mouth snarls, white-fanged, bristling with tufts of hair. Spotted jaguar skin gleams as the dancer's body twists into motion. A whip of rope, held lightly in the dancer’s hands, calls and recalls the flash of lightning.
Acquired by Maria de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle in the city of Puebla, Mexico, this doll represents a traditional tiger or jaguar dancer of the Nahua people of Guerrero (María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, Nahua of Guerrero Doll).
This doll and many other form the extraordinary collection of doll historian María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, a descendant of the Nahua Indigenous people of Mexico. Over the past thirty years, María de Lourdes has collected, preserved, and researched over five hundred handmade dolls from sixty countries. She has spent these years learning about the Indigenous knowledge of artisans from different cultures around the world—knowledge not written into books, but sewn and carved and painted in the form of traditional dolls (María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, informal presentation, 26 February 2025). A digital doll library based on the collection is created and maintained by the University of Toronto Scarborough Library Digital Collections.
“Mi objectivo es preservar una herencia cultural, un testimonio de las culturas diferentes.” My objective is to preserve cultural heritage, a testimony to different cultures.
María de Lourdes’ work is a labour of love and scholarship—in her own words, “una busqueda incansable en el sol, en la lluvia” (“an inexhaustible search in the sunshine, in the rain”) (María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, informal presentation, February 26, 2025).
“Cada muñeca nos habla cosas diferentes.” Each doll speaks to us of different things.
The present exhibit was created by three undergraduate researchers—Agnes Hu, Brianna Silva, and Emilia Astani. It represents a collaboration between these researchers and a wider research group: María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle, Miriam Castillo Orozco, Nicole Klenk, and Alexandra Bolintineanu, via the SAIL (Sensory, Affective, Imaginative and Land-Based) knowledge and pedagogy group and Woodsworth College's Digital Humanities Minor, respectively. The work developed in the framework of DHU437 (Research Opportunities in the Digital Humanities), an upper-year capstone course taught by Jennifer Ross.
Each researcher selected a doll that spoke to her, through childhood memories and familial cultural roots. Over several months, each researcher entered into conversation with María de Lourdes, learning from with María de Lourdes’ scholarship and collection. In digital environments, researchers reflected on their dolls’ stories, both by researching the cultural significance of the dolls, and by building digital artifacts to reflect that significance.
In this way, Agnes Hu imagines the Chinese puppet-doll in action, animated by human hands, in a three-dimensional display that reflects on the centuries-long tradition of Chinese glove puppetry and the storytelling it enables. Through her exhibit, Agnes reflects on tactility and embodiment in digital environments.
Brianna Silva imagines her Spanish doll within a three-dimensional virtual museum. This 3D museum reflects the doll’s historical origin in the Spanish city of Toledo; but it also reflects María de Lourdes Orozco Cuautle’s intellectual project and her aspirations that the doll should be understood and preserved as a significant historical and cultural artifact.
Finally, Emilia Astani imagines her Iranian doll in textile layers anchored to digital layers. In Emilia’s exhibit, each richly crafted garment on the Iranian doll’s body anchors a different story—about Iran’s Gilaki region; about traditional textiles whose beauty reflects the artistry of women; or about traditional dances linked to land and agriculture. Inviting a multisensory approach to her doll, Emilia reflects on questions of gender roles and social justice.
Welcome! We hope you enjoy learning with dolls in our company.