Sekai, Japanese for ‘world', is a series of clever sculptures by Maico Akiba, in which tiny little worlds emerge on the backs of wooden animals. The sculptor and illustrator collects the small figures from Souvenir From Tokyo, the National Museum of Art and Design Tokyo museum shop. She uses miniature trees, cars, people, and even telephone poles to build the detailed scenes on wooden creatures like a panda bear, a hippo, and a turtle, who co-exist with the green landscapes glued to their backs.
To attach the tiny scenes to the figures, Akiba uses various bonding materials and paints the animals with acrylics. Some dioramas are sparse, with only a single person wandering the deserted land, while others are jam packed with chaotic spectacles. In Akiba's imaginative world, everyone depends on each other to exist in an isolated little universe.
