Eric Garner’s illuminated spirit hovering over the police who killed him. Canadian painter Tom Thomson revisited on a flamingo-headed acid trip. A selfie-taking Kim Kardashian as Venus emerging from the windshield of a sinking Lamborghini.

Welcome to the eclectic miniature world of Talwst.

The Toronto artist is a creative polymath, deftly working in music, television, film, fashion, painting and performance art. But it’s the dioramas he crafts in small antique ring boxes that have become his raison d’être.

“This form is calling me,” Talwst says from his Toronto studio. “I can make these feel like a poem; I can make these feel like a movie; I can make them feel like all the other mediums I was working in.”

It all started seven years ago when a Vancouver street peddler of found miscellanea handed the artist a small ring box.

“I want to see what you bring back,” Talwst was told. He crafted a diorama of his then-girlfriend emerging from an azure sea. From there, his passion for the minuscule form — the dimensions of which would deter most artists — grew.

Born in Edmonton to Trinidadian parents, a young Curtis Santiago would spend the long Alberta winters locked in his room building car models and Plasticine dioramas.

The “Talwst” moniker, the 36-year-old artist says, is pronounced “Tall Waist,” which was a family nickname inspired by the spider-long legs he shares with his father and grandfather.

“Alberta taught me how to hibernate,” he says. “When there’d be a week of minus 40 and no one could go outside, I’d be in my room just making models.”

Talwst’s Toronto studio sits next to an abandoned Kodak plant near the old Ontario Stockyards. Tucked into the corner of a high-ceilinged room, there’s a calculated madness to the artist’s workspace. Found objects dominate Talwst’s world and, wherever he goes, you’ll find him eyeing the ground for material.

Scattered about are bits of copper wire, tufts of cotton and moss, hunks of stone, tiny twigs, clips of tapestries, shreds of postcards, patches of snakeskin and all matter of paint chips. There’s also an array of model paints, LED lights, packages of glitter and coloured powders, and hundreds of scaled railroad model figurines that Talwst chops apart, embellishes and Frankensteins to create the people that populate his dioramas.

Talwst works at a stand magnifier. Tweezers, glue, modelling knives and fine paintbrushes are all close at hand. Every project is meticulously researched. Some of the miniature works took years to make. Most take several months. Today’s he’s crafting a Mesopotamian hut where a laptop-wielding ancient will be bathed in the glow of an LED light.

“Sound, light, attention to detail — that’s where I’m going.”

Talwst readily cites the late Caribbean-American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat — currently being feted at the Art Gallery of Ontario — as the inspiration for his colourful, socially conscious cut-and-paste work.

“I really like looking at the artists that were told ‘no,’” Talwst says. “Because these were told ‘no’ for a long time.”

Talwst’s dioramas are mixtapes of materials and themes that create multi-faceted layers of meaning by blending pop culture, art history and social justice issues into seamless wholes. Each is like a visual haiku: a universe encapsulated in the palm of your hand. Essentially, they are snapshots of Talwst’s expansive world view and glimpses into his restless mind.

The Execution of Michael Brown, which is on display at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, commemorates the August 2014 shooting death of the unarmed black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. In the box, the killing plays out underneath the windows of a red brick building: Brown gunned down, tufts of cottonlike smoke billowing from the rifles. The scene is modelled after Édouard Manet’s 19th century paintingThe Execution of Emperor Maximilian.

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Isha: Evening Prayer is a piece inspired by Talwst’s former art students, who feared talking about their Muslim faith in our post-Sept. 11 world. In this box, a lone dark figure prays into the night to show the beauty and universal truths of all religions. All in a diorama whose diameter is only slightly larger than a quarter.

In Uh Huh Honey, rapper Kanye West grips a microphone while walking on water, as wife Kim Kardashian emerges from the windshield of a sinking black Lamborghini, taking a selfie in a white swimsuit, like Venus in a bed of flowers. Above them is a detail from Jacopo Pontormo’s 16th-century painting The Deposition from the Cross — a jab at West’s messianic posturing.

“I respect his courage to say something outlandish and then make it happen,” Talwst says of the notoriously self-aggrandizing rapper. “Everything that I have achieved is because at one point, as crazy as it sounded, I said it out loud.”

In one corner of his desk, there are stacks of jewelry boxes roughly arranged by size and colour. The boxes are bought or found, or donated to the artist. One pile of boxes has been earmarked for a Picasso-esque blue series. Talwst shows off another: a frayed, pale box that once held a ring designed by Napoleon’s personal jeweller.

“I don’t want a box that looks new,” he says. “I want it to have dirt and dust in the detail. I’m not going to clean that off. I want it to be torn and shredded and frayed. I want it to have had a life before it enters my studio.”

A selection of Talwst’s work is on display at the Art Gallery of Mississauga until April 12. Talwst is also the artistic director of the AGO’s 11th Massive Party, which will be held on April 23. The event runs concurrently with the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition.

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