Showcase for Military Uniform, 1989

Showcase for Military Uniform, made from a hinged wooden armoire, is covered in torn collaged pieces of paper with hand-written numbers and letters scrawled in ink. Its double doors open to reveal an equally intricate interior containing ink drawings and diagrams. This delicate work immediately evokes an otherworldly totem with its mixture of strange geometry and secret architecture. It is a great example of Seillé’s process and development, from her early fascination with words to the creation of her own, which she refers to as “dense signs”. Born in France in 1951, Seillé travelled to England in the 1970s to study studio art. There, feeling out of place as a foreigner, she began to devise her own world where her quasi-architectural structures in her drawings and sculptures were a way for her to create order from chaos. In much the same way, words have also brought an order to the artist and her work. Words awakened in her a sensitivity to line and letters, often intermingling linearity and color to create symmetry and repetition, as evidenced here.