1-Cosmogony
Collection
The inaugural collection by Paris-based mixed-media artist Karine Mimoun: four large-scale paintings and one sculpture, each evoking a deity from a lost civilisation, composed of hundreds of small faces sculpted and painted like gems.
A film traces the collection, work by work, and the stories behind them.
« Hundreds of different faces, coming together to compose symbols that speak to all of us.
That is what 1-Cosmogony is. Not a collection of five works, but a single statement.
These symbols outlasted their civilisations because they were always speaking to all of us, reminding us that we have always been one. That is why this collection is called 1. »
Karine Mimoun
The Moai, God of the ancestor
Inspired by the Rapa Nui civilisation. 685 + 1 faces.
120 × 60 × 60 cm / 47.2 x 23.6 x 23.6 in
Rising from the earth, the Moai bears the weight of its ancestors, leaning dangerously toward the ground yet defying gravity by remaining upright. The work exists entirely within the realm of illusion: 685 faces are embedded within a 686th that appears carved from pink marble, though nothing here is what it seems.
Every surface, front, back and sides, is clothed in sculpted faces clustering in families of colour to form veins of turquoise, pearl, amber and gold. Their expressions span the full range of human emotion: serene faces with eyes closed in meditation, others open-mouthed as if singing a sacred hymn, while skulls slip among them as a reminder that death is inseparable from life.
Standing like an italicised « 1 », the Moai echoes the very title of the collection, where unity is the thread that binds each work, asking us to consider the fragile equilibrium that sustains our shared humanity, past, present and yet to come.
Viracocha, God of creation
Inspired by the pre-Incan Andean civilisation. 317 faces.
80 x 100 cm / 31.5 x 39.4 in (work)
87 x 107 cm / 34.3 x 42.1 in (framed)
Long before the Inca Empire, Viracocha emerged as the supreme creator deity of the Andes: shaper of the cosmos, orderer of the stars, embodiment of both original chaos and creative harmony.
In this contemporary interpretation, he appears as a fractal entity composed of 317 sculpted faces, painted in gold and tiger’s eye tonalities, radiating outward like a sacred sun. Textured rays structure the background around his figure as he holds his twin serpent lances, symbols of power, duality and transformation.
From the infinitely small to the infinitely vast, this fractal structure evokes the essence of creation itself: a pattern that reveals itself through the assembly of countless human faces. In this sacred figure, where every fragment composes the whole, our deepest nature perhaps reveals itself: that of perpetual creators of our own reality.
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Quetzalcoatl, God of transmutation
Inspired by the Mesoamerican civilisation. 475 faces.
160 x 90 cm / 63 x 35.4 in (work)
167 x 97 cm / 65.7 x 38.2 in (framed)
Quetzalcoatl unfolds as a living form composed of 475 individually sculpted faces, assembled not as a crowd but as a single body traversed by one continuous energy, undulating against a textured red background of scaled relief edged in gold.
The faces, treated as gems, draw their tonalities from serpentine, malachite and peridot: deep, mineral, telluric greens that evoke the density of stone and the memory of the earth. Each face is a fragment of consciousness; together they give rise to an entity of mythic order.
Envisioned as a principle of transmutation, the serpent accepts elevation without denying its origins, while the feathers, suggested through sculpted skulls, mark the passage from raw energy to a higher form of consciousness. This transmutation implies necessary loss: the shedding of an identity that has run its course, so that energy may circulate anew.
The work does not illustrate an ancient myth; it makes it present. The feathered serpent is not a protective figure but a threshold, inscribing the disappearance of a former state as the condition of all renewal.
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Khepri, God of eternal rebirth
Inspired by the Ancien Egypt. 321 sculpted faces.
80 x 100 cm / 31.5 x 39.4 in (work)
87 x 107 cm / 34.3 x 42.1 in (framed)
Khepri appears here as a winged golden scarab pushing its sphere against a midnight blue background threaded with golden filaments. In ancient Egypt, this figure embodied the daily cycle of the sun: death and rebirth at dawn, an eternal metamorphosis.
321 faces, moulded and painted in metallic pigments, form the scarab’s shell once assembled, their iridescence evoking the precious and ephemeral nature of each fragment that composes the whole.
From detail to deity, from fragment to totality, Khepri invites us to consider our place within a humanity in perpetual transformation, ever expanding like the cosmos itself. He asks us whether we too carry the capacity to be reborn each day, to reinvent ourselves and breathe new life into our own existence within this vast collective whole.
Lamassu, God of protection
Inspired by the Lamassu of the Assyrian Empire. 380 faces
80 x 98 cm / 31.5 x 38.6 in (work)
87 x 105 cm / 34.3 x 41.3 in (framed)
Five thousand years ago, at the heart of Mesopotamia, a magnificent guardian was born: part human, part bull, part celestial being, standing watch over the gates of palaces as keeper of the threshold between the visible and invisible worlds. This work was inspired by the Khorsabad Palace room at the Louvre in Paris, where the monumental presence of the Lamassu first revealed itself.
In this contemporary interpretation, the Lamassu is woven from 380 sculpted faces, painted in turquoise and lapis-lazuli tonalities, appearing to emerge from the depths of the sea. Hundreds of small waves radiate from the central motif, echoing the relief of the faces in a dialogue between surface and depth.
From isolated fragment to unified symbol, the Lamassu rises like a rock from the ocean, guardian of a mystery that transcends us and asks us to consider our place within a greater whole.
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Karine Mimoun presents each work of the collection and invites you into the intricate details that bring every piece to life.