The exhibition title refers to the “cabinets of curiosities,” pieces of furniture in which rare and curious objects were displayed, objects that in turn enriched the Wunderkammer—small private museums dating back to the 16th century, which then developed further in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Wunderkammer (wonder chambers or chambers of curiosities) were organized with the purpose of “summoning the world into a finite space, reducing it emblematically, making it accessible to the gaze in order to appropriate it and dominate it.” In these places of wonder, time seemed to collapse: the unusual juxtaposition, hybridization, and displacement of meaning caused every chronology or dating to collapse, allowing objects to coexist in a space without coordinates.

The term “cabinet,” while partly departing from its original meaning, is intended here to evoke a vast and articulated device for staging and understanding reality—one free from the rigid schemas we usually use to separate the ancient from the modern and contemporary.