Abigail Goldman

About

Upon first approach, Abigail Goldman’s carefully crafted dioramas look like something you would see in a history museum or hobbyist display with their neatly manicured green lawns and orderly arranged buildings complete with tiny people, tiny cars and other bespoke props. However, closer inspection reveals absurd mise-en-scenes of grotesque horror and often humourous violence with the viewer left to construct their own narrative in an attempt fill in the blanks. These ‘Dieoramas’ as they are aptly named are the product of Goldman’s life-long fascination with crime and the dark side of the human psyche. Beginning her career as a newspaper crime reporter and then investigator for the Federal Public Defender in Las Vegas, USA, Goldman now works as an investigator for the Public Defender in Bellingham, Washington. Goldman initially began crafting her imaginary crime scenes in 2011 as a hobby and also as a way of decompressing and detaching from her day job. However, it didn’t take long before her miniatures went viral on Reddit, with photos of her work quickly amassing hundreds of comments and tens of thousands (now, millions) of views. Almost overnight, her work began selling out in art galleries and she had a waiting list for her work. Rendered in a scale of 1:87, Goldman’s Dieoramas range between 4 inches and 4 feet long, with her human figures smaller than an inch tall. Using elements from train model kits, craft and hardware stores, found materials, and real dirt from Las Vegas, Goldman constructs these miniature scenes with tweezers and a magnifying glass. After adding her trademark dash of red acrylic paint in lieu of blood, she seals them with a perspex case. Despite her professional involvement in the criminal justice system, Goldman never portrays real life cases, instead opting for a ‘fantasy’ or fictional version of the realities that lie beneath the pristine facades of American suburban life. Implicit in these scenes is a strange relationship between the mu