I came across these glass dioramas by Parisian artist Maïssa Toulet when I was sifting through Flickr photos for a story I was doing The Inside Source about displaying white collections. I was immediately drawn into her quirky little worlds, in which mice wear suits, ducks have arms, and where Marie Antoinette finds her fate.
Toulet cites the assemblies of the American artist Joseph Cornell as her initial inspiration. She is drawn to the “eclectic jumble” of curiosity cabinets—the disturbing dimension, sometimes morbid, cabinets of curiosities, which accumulate stuffed animals, skeletons, and organs preserved in formaldehyde.
She views her pieces as miniature museums, and says that though nothing is classified with apparent logic, each object has a distinct place; none are interchangeable. Her most recent works are moving away from the concept of curio cabinets towards pieces that are self-contained stories.
I find them to be part science project, part crazy collector, part artistic effort; all intoxicating.
Ecographie
2007
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A Rodent Trap
2007
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Les Végétaux
2008
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Oral Hygiene in Adults
2008
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View
2008
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The Autopsy of Marie-Antoinette
2011
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The Menagerie
2011
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Under the Sea
2007
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Souvenirs of Youth
2011
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Jeune fille, que vous faut-il pour le printemps?
2010
