By Sky Pinkett
Staff Writer
An artist of many trades, Sebastienne Mundheim has worked as a writer, designer, director, performer, educator and more for over 30 years. On Feb. 12, the College’s Art Gallery was treated to some of her interdisciplinary talents with her “Performance Environments” puppetry installation.
“I didn’t necessarily want to go into puppetry,” Mundheim said. “When I was young, I always made little sculptural characters…and then I would write little stories about them. So I always liked to make objects, and I always liked to put those objects with a story. When I started to tell those stories in front of people, the natural thing to do is to move those objects.”
This combination of object and story was evident in the exhibit’s first installation toward the left of the room. Titled “The Giants and Sophie,” viewers are met with six giant heads that tower over observers, each with their own unique set of bulbous eyes, colorful skin, scruffy hair and crooked teeth. In the opposite corner can be found a miniscule town made up of wire, wood, paper, glue and other materials, and a little girl defiantly staring up at the giants.
Mundheim was commissioned in 2023 to create puppets of the seven giants and a little girl for The Arden Theatre Company’s production of Ronald Dahl’s “The BFG.”
“I included [“The Giants and Sophie”] because they hadn’t been seen in an exhibition setting before and I thought these would look really cool in the space,” Mundheim said.
Attached to each giant head are harnesses that can be fastened to an actor operating the puppet. Outside of the exhibit on the left was a large TV displaying highlights from Mundheim’s various shows. Among the highlights were clips of some of the actors performing with the giant heads in action.
The second puppetry creation featured in the gallery was “Sea of Birds: from Guna Tales…and Clare.” Mundheim created a number of yellow flowers set in a mound of soil, each with their own set of rooty legs, that covered a large portion of the floor.
Walking deeper into the piece, you could see a human skeleton lounging on its hip, and an animal-like skeleton grazing its head against the ground. Above them were cardboard planes hanging from the ceiling, shining with the installation’s lighting overhead.
In the midst of it all stood a little blonde girl wearing clothes from a past era. The girl, named Clare, came from a separate performance, but was included in the “Sea of Birds” world to represent the artist’s mother and her story of leaving Latvia during Stalin’s Reign of Terror.
Explaining her mother’s connection to the work, Mundheim said, “My mom is an incredible storyteller, and my whole life I always sort of imitated her. I assumed that everyone would be mesmerized in the way that I am by her stories, and that I could really occupy or inhabit her presence.”
The artwork surrounds the viewer, making them feel as if they have stepped into another time and place. The shadows that the individual creations cast upon the wall further convey the element of a past time.
“I also was thinking about what inspired me to make things,” Mundheim said of her thought process behind the work. “I was thinking about my mom as a storyteller and me as a maker of things, and I thought that they both do a similar thing in terms of healing. The stories and the making are a way of remembering and forgetting, and that seemed really interesting to me.”
After giving some time for all the visitors to digest the artwork, everyone gathered around for a brief introduction of Mundheim and her past work and experience.
“I think there’s something about the commitment of a group of people who decide that things that are not living are,” Mundheim said to the crowd. “It’s an unfamiliar space for us. It gives you something that shakes you up.”
Others who attended the exhibit expressed their thorough enjoyment and newfound appreciation for puppetry as an art form.
“Before I came here, I didn’t really think about puppetry that much. I didn’t really consider it as much of an art,” said Elena Sretenovic, a freshman biology major. “Now after I’ve seen the puppets, I’m able to see puppetry in a new light and I’m able to see it as an art form that can impact people’s lives and the way they observe things.”
While at the College, Mundheim is slated to perform her production “Kea and the Ark” in the Black Box Theatre on Saturday, March 1 and Sunday, March 2, both at 2 p.m. The performance combines puppetry, dance and electric cello to tell the true story of Kea Tawana, a woman who built a three-story tall and 86-foot long ark in Newark, New Jersey during the 1980s.
Tickets for “Kea and the Ark” are available now on the TCNJ Center for the Arts website.
As for Mundheim’s two installation exhibits in the College’s Art Gallery, viewing will be available in the AIMM Building in room 111 until March 2. Check out this exhibit to gain a new awareness of the artistic power of puppetry and paper sculpture.
