There is a pact between art and enchantment via the fetish, especially dolls, puppets, and marionettes (much interpreted by philosopher-poets and artists). Mithu Sen’s collection is, as she says, an archive of vernacular culture – of unidentified deities who cannot be historicized; it is a nurturing lair breeding abject creatures who signal their unbelonging. The round vitrine (a circus ring and shadow play), holds her “menagerie” of voodoo figurines, porno trash, miniature monsters, skulls, and all manner of memento mori that spell (an always premature) death. Mithu’s indulgence, meets here with a quite different form of Wunderkammer aesthetic.
