The very eerie and very elegant creatures of Monique Motil are assemblaged from a variety of organic and synthetic materials, including bones, beads, textiles, and animal body parts. Attired in exquisite, fanciful costumes which are meticulously crafted, rich brocades and velvets, embroidery, and beadwork, each one-of-a-kind creation presents a persona combining the historical and the present, the live and the dead, the human and the animal.
With a sense of the dramatically uncanny, these aristocrats of the macabre, beautiful apparitions, avian or mink, beaver or cat skull-headed, carry out an endless mourning. They are pervaded with a sense of agedness, which is soaked into the richness and detail of their garments, and have all the delicacy of the most fragile and lovely dolls, without their quality of preciousness.
Instead, these creatures exude a foreboding sense of being timeless, deathless, ruthless executors of justice, vessels of past vengeances, long-carried grudges and dark passions. With their cruel claws, their magisterial dignity, their lace and fripperies, Monique’s hybrid creations embody haunting gracefulness on a small scale. Monique Motil also designs shadowboxes, assemblages, headdresses, and other artistic artifacts.
