Exposition Universelle – Mixed Media Collage on Paper

The Original

Exposition Universelle by Robin Rivers is an original piece of mixed media collage on paper from the Albertine Series. I created this piece using antique postcards, archival pieces, found photography, handmade papers, and acrylic medium.awing one in and reconstructing how we perceive the world? Through the Albertine series, I wanted to explore how memory and time fragment, reconstructing themselves into spaces that live vividly in our experience, even when they are not a faithful representation of the original. 

Exposition Universelle celebrates the 1889 Worlds Fair and the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower with public domain elements from Albert-Charles Tissandier, Aexandre Cabanel, Joséphine Arthurine Blot,  the Musée Carnavalet archives, my Albertine and antique postcards from Paris, France. Each element is carefully chosen and cut to capture a moment when Henri is photographing the event and believes he sees an image of Albertine in the sky.

Sources

• • Paris Musées (CC Zero)
    • Ephemera, Exposition universelle de 1889. Ticket d’entrée, C. Richards (Printer) (1889) (CC0)
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (public domain)
    • Postcard, Eiffel Tower, anonymous (c. 1890-99) (PD)
    • Albert-Charles Tissandier, Drawing for an Illustration in “Voyages du Flandre”, (no date)  (PD)
    • Oil on canvas, Alexandre Cabanel, Echo, (1874) (PD)
    • Enamel bowl (photo), Joséphine Arthurine Blot, Bowl honoring Gaston Tissandier, (1870) (PD) 
  • Artist materials
    • Handmade papers, vellum, acrylic matte medium

Notes on Care

Albertine is a love story at heart. I build each collage from public‑domain materials—primarily found pieces, Paris Musées archives and The Met Open Access—and note what’s known about dates and collections. While the work leans into romance, I set Henri and Albertine within the city’s real textures: its boulevards and bright nights, and the lives working behind the light. Where details are uncertain, I mark them as circa. My aim is to honor the past—its beauty and its blemishes—while inviting you into a story that feels intimate and true to its time.

The Artist

Robin Rivers is an artist, photographer, and writer who creates from conversations with ancient ponds and old trees, spirits of place and old ones whose lost stories want to be told. As a mixed-media artist, Rivers works with original photography, museum archives, and storytelling to give form to the old ones who speak to her through dreams, deep listening, and walking the land in ancient places. Her practice weaves together mystical guidance and archival research, creating magical pieces that restore powerful lost connections and stories rising up once again. Robin creates all pieces at Studio Albertine in Vancouver, Canada—on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples. This includes the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Before you go, check out more of my work HERE.

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