Ella Boyle

Boyfriend Material: The Puppet I Made to Love Me Back is a multimedia episodic work that uses puppetry to satirically expose the performance of femininity and identity in modern dating. The protagonist in the narrative—who shares the artist’s name and likeness—builds her ideal puppet boyfriend through a digital interface, dates him across various sitcom-style scenarios, gets ghosted, and ultimately transforms herself into a puppet. Grounded in feminist theory and the language of puppetry, the work explores questions of control: who has it, who gives it up, and at what cost.

Ella Boyle (b. 2004) is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist working across photography, videography, sculpture and performance.