Vicky Sabourin was headed for a career in the theatre before she turned to the visual arts. Each of her installation works combines a tableau vivant and a diorama in which she performs, so that viewers can appreciate them whether she is there or not. Inspired by minor news items, personal or family anecdotes, stories or a historical event documented with photographs and having given rise to a work of fiction, Sabourin systematically turns to a narrative thread to anchor her performative installations. These works are viewed generally as if through a frame, or a system that stands in for one, thus forming a boundary between reality and fiction that she shifts and challenges more and more from project to project.

A Triad around Representation: Diorama, Window, Painting

Karen Wonders defines the diorama as a museum-related device that creates “the illusion of a real scene viewed through a window.”¹ In its most common version, the diorama is presented as a showcase featuring a historical situation or a natural habitat constructed as authentically and meticulously as possible. Composed of three elements acting in chorus to guarantee the realism of the environment portrayed, it includes a stuffed animal or a lifelike wax mannequin placed in a set, reproducing as faithfully as possible the original context of the scene, which continues in a painting used as a backdrop. The diorama reached its height of popularity in natural history museums, becoming an educational tool for transmitting knowledge about the natural world

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