Eliane Monnin was born in Morteau, a family of watchmakers, speleologists and owners of collections. After studying applied arts and plastic arts at the faculty of Strasbourg, she set up her studio in the Basque Country in 2002. A new area of operation was opened to her in 2007 when she learned that she was dealing with the ground. This material animates her, and the fascination she has with nature, and her ecological abstractions drive her to create a delicate world similar to living beings. In the works of Eliane Monnin, we see the spirit of the classic Cabinet of Curiosities and its elementary engine: to amass, to separate, to order, but also to put a rare object in a vacuum, a sense that gives meaning to it. There is also a curiosity for the mathematical nature of natural objects, for the paradox between the irregularity of forms and the formula behind the flawless reproduction of patterns, For nature as a creator of a life-long drive that may be limited to poetry, which itself reproduces something of nature… Shells, epidermis, sprouts of plants, organics, minerals surface in a shocking staging where obsession, fascination-repulsion, agony… Yet humour, too is not absent. 

Éliane Monnin was primarily inspired by the up-and-coming 1990s. The creative community of the 1990s was characterised by a collective of artists based in the United Kingdom who came to be known as the YBAs or Young British Artists. Connected loosely by age and race, they were a mixed group of practitioners. A range of YBAs attended the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths in London, and were preferred by the ‘super collector’ of the time Charles Saatchi. 

Damien Hirst is the most renowned member of the party which includes Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk, Sarah Lucas and Sam Taylor-Johnson (born Sam Taylor-Wood). The YBAs were famous for their use of shock techniques and sensationalism, as well as their use of cheap products, crazy habits and a mentality that was both defiant and commercial.