Karine Giboulo: Housewarming

Enter a world at once familiar and uncanny. Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo invites visitors into an immersive reimagining of her home at the Gardiner Museum. Brought to life by over 500 miniature polymer clay figures, this is no ordinary house. The figures tell stories that unfold inside, or on, household furniture, appliances, and everyday objects.

Born of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Housewarming” is a logbook of the past two years–a sculpted documentary of individual and collective experiences grounded in current events. The colourful dioramas furnishing each room prompt reflection about the challenges we face as a society, including connectedness and isolation, aging and care, labour and consumerism, the climate crisis, food insecurity, and housing instability.

On the kitchen countertop, a line of people, masked and socially distanced, await access to a food bank. In the bedroom, the drawer of a dresser opens to reveal rows of masked factory workers hunched over industrial sewing machines. In the laundry room, a forgotten iron causes a forest fire, forcing animals to flee their natural habitat.

The more closely you look, the more you will recognize yourself in the scenarios and their protagonists. You may even walk away seeing your own home, and yourself, differently.