At the Dallas Art Fair, Everything’s For Sale, Including Babies

Everything’s supposed to be bigger in Texas, but the stars of this week’s Dallas Art Fair are positively infant-sized, putting even the toddlers of Seoul Fashion Week to shame. The hyperrealistic work of multimedia artist Rachel Hovnanian, they’re gathered in an installation called “Perfect Baby Showroom,” a “laboratory meets shopping mall” for parents to construct their perfect child. Visitors are free to pick them up from their eerily homogenized boxes, where bags of colorful, conventional cereals—another product of genetic modification—act as pillows. As usual, Hovnanian’s tasked herself with inciting conversation, and only two days in, her technology-focused solo booth with Leila Hellery Gallery certainly has already caused a lot of rubbernecking, both in person and on Instagram.