In situ installation at Brussels’ Toys Museum
I was given the chance to further my research within Brussels’ Toy Museum. Instead of following the museum’s traditional didactic categorization of toys, I opted for an installation that encourages playful, fictional narratives. I composed scenes, where objects that I made in my workshop and toys borrowed from the museum’s reserves encounter. These compositions can be seen as illustrations of a tale whose story is being written in the viewer’s mind.
An edition was elaborated parallelly to the installation. It consists of archival documents made available by the museum as well as anecdotes of children playing, gathered by the Museum’s Director. The photographs are organized independently of traditional museum classification criteria but rather like riddles, or witnesses of past games, or as a dreamy stroll through the collections… The children’s anecdotes that accompany the photographs underline the fictional and narrative power of the act of playing: «One only has to say that: avenger, mermaid, princess, prisoner, architect. The game is a space where one dreams as one wants, where one is free to be irrational and excessive.
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