The Anatomy Lesson

The word diorama conjures images of museum displays and science fairs, but Australian artist Mark Powell takes this notion and turns it on its head. He creates miniture tableaus displaying nightmarish scenes of torture, dissection, and suffering that seem suspended in time. We ,the viewer, become like Dante bearing witness to the horror of the Inferno as we transverse the nine levels of Hell.

The fear I am refering to is the fear of the id, the fear of those horrors that nature inevitably inflicts on all of us, the fear of disease, of physical and psychological decay. The dread of irreversible psychosis and demonic possesion have been obsessions for me and I have sculpted my worlds in an attempt to exorcise this dread. - Mark Powell

You can view these fascinating dioramas at Mark’s website and see additional works in his Flickr gallery.