Michel Nedjar

b.1947 · Paris, France

He makes dolls the way other people make prayers, from rags, wax and earth, for the family the Holocaust took.

The life

Born near Paris into a family of Jewish tailors, Nedjar grew up among cloth and sewing machines, haunted by the knowledge of relatives deported and murdered. Travels through Mexico and Guatemala showed him magical uses for dolls, and back in Paris he began making his poupées, binding rags soaked in earth, wax and dye. He co-founded the L’Aracine art brut collection in 1982, now the core of the LaM museum in northern France, and his own work has entered collections from the Pompidou to Lausanne.

The work

Totemic dolls and shrouded figures, sewn, bound and dipped until they look excavated rather than made, plus thousands of drawings and experimental films. The dolls sit somewhere between toy, relic and witness.

Why we love them

He turned inherited grief into guardians, and then helped build the very institutions that protect this whole field.

Go deeper

• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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