French artist Eva Jospin has unveiled a breathtaking exhibition titled "Grottesco" at Paris's iconic Grand Palais, on view from December 10, 2025, through March 15, 2026. The show features more than fifteen sculptural works crafted primarily from cardboard, a humble material that Jospin has elevated to an art form over her nearly two-decade career. Visitors can access the exhibition with the same ticket that grants entry to Claire Tabouret's display of stained glass models for Notre-Dame Cathedral. Jospin's installation completely reimagines the gallery space, drawing inspiration from the legendary discovery of Nero's Domus Aurea, where ancient Roman frescoes were found buried underground, giving birth to the "grotesque" style that intertwines architecture and vegetation in decorative abandon.

The daughter of a former French Prime Minister, Jospin initially aspired to be a painter before finding her true calling in sculpture through the unlikely medium of cardboard. After graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she began transforming the detritus of globalized commerce into intricate architectural lacework. Her signature material allows her to create monumental yet delicate structures that challenge perceptions of value and permanence in contemporary art. The exhibition's narrative centers on that ancient Roman story of accidental discovery, using it as a thread to weave her own labyrinthine path through myth and imagination.

The journey through "Grottesco" demands active participation from viewers, who must walk, turn, and double back to fully appreciate the layered experience. The exhibition opens with a vertiginous green promontory that immediately establishes the otherworldly atmosphere. A towering cenotaph rises like a cardboard Tower of Babel, demonstrating Jospin's mastery of scale and structural complexity. The centerpiece, "Panorama," is a nine-by-nine-meter arc constructed from wood and cardboard that envelops visitors like an enchanted forest. This immersive installation encourages contemplation of how mineral elements dialogue with textile techniques, where sculpture meets embroidery, and where art history's memory surfaces without becoming mere citation.

Among the exhibited works, several new pieces push artistic boundaries even further. A series of embroidered bas-reliefs catch light with pearls, loose threads, and cascading fringes that evoke nymphaea, or nymph fountains, reimagined through contemporary craft. Jospin explores materials at every scale, working with tweezers on individual blades of grass while also wielding sanders atop ladders to polish ten-meter domes. This juxtaposition of meticulous detail and monumental ambition defines her practice. Her cut trees recall Italian primitives like Giovanni Bellini and Piero di Cosimo, while her trompe-l'oeil caves and hidden shells in ceilings create a world where artistic traditions merge seamlessly.

As daylight fades and Paris sky darkens through the Grand Palais windows, the magic of Jospin's creation reaches its full potential. Visitors find themselves questioning whether they stand before an opera set or at the threshold of a Wonderland they could slip into like Alice through the looking glass. The artist crafts spaces where one yearns to dwell, even while recognizing they exist only in fairy tales. This tension between desire and reality, between permanence and ephemerality, forms the heart of Jospin's artistic project. The exhibition transforms the historic venue into a contemporary grotto that honors its baroque inspirations while remaining firmly rooted in present-day concerns about materiality and imagination.

"Grottesco" represents a culmination of Jospin's ongoing investigation into how we inhabit and imagine spaces. By using recycled cardboard—a material that speaks to both environmental consciousness and the fragility of human creation—she builds monuments that feel both ancient and urgently contemporary. The show runs through mid-March 2026 at the Grand Palais, located at 7 Avenue Winston Churchill in the 8th arrondissement. For those seeking an art experience that transcends traditional boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and craft, Jospin's baroque cave offers a transformative journey into the possibilities of contemporary artistic expression.