What would you do with a scarily lifelike doll of your own mother? This is what a seven-year-old did

Polish photographer Aneta Grzeszykowska captured her daughter interacting with an eerie silicone replica of herself in her dark and humorous series Mama

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n one photograph taken by the Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska, her seven-year-old daughter Francziska stands on the weedy banks of the Liwiec River, dressed in a purple swimsuit and denim shorts. Francziska has her face turned towards the boggy water; beside her, sitting inside a wheelbarrow, is her mother’s torso.

In the next ambiguous image, Francziska holds her mother’s head underwater. In the another, the two float, Ophelia-like, side by side.

But the Grzeszykowska in these photos is not Grzeszykowska at all: it is a silicone replica of the artist, handcrafted for the 25 photographs in her series Mama, which is now on view at Melbourne’s Buxton Contemporary.