housewarming by karine giboulo

i saw an excellent exhibit last month at the gardiner museum in toronto. it’s on until may 7th. i had intended to write a post earlier, but i’ve been recovering after breaking my arm. the lack of caps in this post isn’t a creative statement. it’s just a lot easier to type one handed without having to hit the additional needed keys for upper case letters.

karine giboulo, who is from montréal, created many hundreds of miniature people, animals and objects out of polymer clay and assembled these in her imagined home. each of the scenes she created brings the wider world and issues of our time into her space and, by extension, the viewer’s space.

for example, in the kitchen are refugees in a casserole dish sharing a meal; in the pantry are glass canning jars with an elderly person inside each one; in the bathroom both floods and fires cause humans and animals to flee; in the bedroom dresser are rows and rows of women sewing in a factory and in the backyard are unhoused people sleeping on a tarp.

the installations take place in the time of covid-19 and were, for me, also a way of reflecting on that often tragic upheaval that our governments now seem eager to leave unacknowledged.

here’s a few of the many photos of karine giboulo’s powerful work i took at the show:

sustenance–on a counter in the kitchen

my dinosaur disease–on a wall shelf in the bedroom

hidden in my drawers–in a dresser drawer in the bedroom

my perfect world–in giboulo’s son’s room

my perfect world–in giboulo’s son’s room

shelter–in a tent in the back yard