We thought about visiting a serious exhibition in a prestigious Paris museum. We pass through a monumental door, climb a beautiful white staircase, then walk down a corridor… and we are confronted by plastic toys. Playmobil Mummies. Pop statue surrounded by lines. A box of Lego (“Indiana Jones and the Escape from the Lost Tomb”). Mummy stuffed animal. Mummy socks. Mummy keychain. Posters from Return of the mummy. A Tintin comic book, Sun Temple, and trinkets shaped like Egyptian sarcophagi.
OK, we get the message: here we are drowning in all the clichés that flood popular culture the moment we say the word “mummy.” Always stories of curses… and mummy figures all in white and repeatedly appearing, almost comically, with bandages straight from the pharmacy.
“We want to show appeal with imagery mummy in our collective imagination. So, we start from the ordinary things and then, we will allow ourselves to deconstruct these ideas.” explained Eloïse Quétel, scientific commissioner
