The Singing Bones

"Photographed like museum exhibits, Shaun Tan’s little sculptures pack a multilayered symbolic punch. Taking the Grimm fairy tales as his starting point, he strips each story of its encrustations of language and distills it into a single iconic image. He writes that he was inspired by Inuit stone carvings and pre-Columbian clay figurines, and he uses these styles to critique virtually every aspect of Western mythmaking. He does it all with the humblest of materials, primarily papier-mâché and air-drying clay."