May 2023 - Toronto ON
It's been a while since I went to the Gardiner Museum. I probably only go once or twice a year to see an exhibit.
Enter a world at once familiar and uncanny. Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo invites visitors into an immersive reimagining of her home. Brought to life by over 500 miniature polymer clay figures, this is no ordinary house. A response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the waves of confinement and isolation that followed, Housewarming is a sculpted documentary of individual and collective experiences grounded in current events. With the pandemic as a constant presence, the colourful dioramas furnishing each room prompt reflection about the challenges we face as a society. Their stories amplify themes pertaining to connectedness and isolation, aging and care, labour and consumerism, the climate crisis, food insecurity, and housing instability. The exhibition also unveils a personal narrative of self-acceptance and identity and transports us to the world of childhood, a critical period in the development of consciousness about the world.
On the kitchen countertop, a line of people, masked and socially distanced, await access to a food bank.
Always direct and incisive, Giboulo’s microcosms articulate unexpected juxtapositions playful and sad, realistic and absurd, poetic and political prompting a range of emotions from delight to profound empathy. The more closely we look, the more we may recognize ourselves in the scenarios and their protagonists.
Fascinating! Somehow I've never gotten to that museum.
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