danièle hibon
mirage dolls
Modern art is populated with creatures made of wood, fabric, and feathers: from the symbolist puppet show imagined by Maeterlinck (Princess Maleine) to Calder’s acrobats, from Kokoschka’s provocative Scandalous Doll to the self-portrait dolls of Dadaist Hannah Höch. Drawing inspiration from this tradition, Danièle Hibon has, since the 1970s, gathered rare materials to create a singular universe of poetic figures. The gallery is proud to present, for the first time, 25 of her dolls—vivid assemblages imbued with intimate stories and distant echoes.
These works embody the delicate transition between art and life. Starting in the 1970s, Danièle Hibon, first alongside her friend Dorothea Tanning and later on her own, devoted herself to an unrelenting collection of materials and objects of all kinds. These included antique fabrics, trimmings, and precious lace, rare stones and pearls, as well as mysterious organic and vegetal materials.With this collection, she embarked on creating an entire population of characters. She glued and assembled these multicolored elements, each imbued with an intimate history, a tale, or a journey to distant lands. Within her creations coexist Hopi kachinas, Bauhaus artist dolls, African gri-gri, Romanesque bestiaries, votive and shamanic figures, and even echoes of romantic literature.
