MONSTRARIUM (2025)

The Monstrarium is no ordinary place. It is neither zoo nor aquarium, neither museum nor vault. It is a chamber of human invention, where the boundaries between fear and fascination dissolve. Here, creatures born of our collective nightmares linger in suspended animation, their forms a grotesque poetry of the unknown. This is where the kraken coils its endless tentacles, where leviathans glide silently through blackened waters, and where chimeras, part dream, part terror, stare back with unblinking eyes. But the Monstrarium does not merely house monsters. It holds a mirror to the species that conjured them: us. In stories, monsters are villains, antagonists of courage and virtue. Yet, we cling to them in literature and film, embellishing their grotesque forms with the kind of detail reserved for love letters. Dracula, Frankenstein, the leviathan—all proof that we don’t just fear monsters; we adore them. We name our enemies after them, branding criminals as “monsters” when their acts eclipse understanding. But in doing so, we grant them an otherworldly power, as though human nature itself couldn’t possibly create such horror. Perhaps our obsession with monsters says less about them and more about us. They let us flirt with the dangerous and the forbidden, to explore our limits without crossing them. Monsters, it turns out, may not live in the dark but in our minds, where fear and fascination are sometimes indistinguishable.