Poisonous Pulchritude: The world of Julia Murakami
Julia Murakami´s Anatomy of a fairy tale, miniatures in little glass cases, take a butcher at the atrocity of well known fairy tales. The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Little Mermaid retold by tiny, precious sculptures with a sinister shift. Saving grace does not exist for the slaughtered ladies in the realm of Julia Murakami. Broken beauties that will never come back. Frozen crime scenes scattered with pieces of evidence. Julia Murakami, herself a bewitching fairy, widens this field of tension between the fabulous and forensics by re-enacting her sites of crime. A lineup of photographs, as shot by an investigator, show the beauty herself as the victim of the creepy crimes. Thus the magical reflects back into the real, blurring the boundaries, straddling the real world and the sorcerous, a passage from fantasy to reality to fantasy. The delicate details of the dead belles are made by her own hair and blood. A possessed enchantress, perpetrator and victim, beauty and beast at once.