On display in the South Gallery of the Columbia Art League
January 6 - January 31, 2026
Reception: Friday, January 23 5:30-7 pm
Artist Statement
Mise en Scène
The arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production
Stage setting
The physical setting of an action
Environment, milieu
France and furniture go way back. Since the eighteenth century, France has been the tastemaker extraordinaire of the Western world. During the Ancien Régime, under absolutist rule, furniture and domestic objects played an important role in the representation and maintenance of power. As historian Leora Auslander has noted, France strategically competed in the world economy by creating a competitive world in the decorative arts. Foreign artisans were wooed and encouraged to set up workshops in the capital. The crown displayed its strength by controlling those who made, sold, and bought furniture.
Many of the locations featured in this show were, at the time of their creation, tangible manifestations of power and wealth. And their interiors followed suit. Today, these interiors help us understand furniture and furnishings as objects of social history. The entirety of a room—chairs, cushions, curtains, commodes, and china—is a mirror that reflects the human emotions, needs, and desires (however rational or irrational) of a small sampling of the wealthy elite that inhabited Paris throughout different times in her history.
As I visited and painted these interiors, I became an actress in their mise en scènes. I let myself pretend. I hope you can imagine yourself in these recreations of places that captured my attention and imagination.
The paintings and book in this show were made possible by a two-month artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and funded by the John T. Milliken Foreign Travel MFA award from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
Artist Bio
Cora Trout is an artist and designer currently living and working in St. Louis. She received her MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis in 2024, and her BA with majors in French and Francophone Studies and Classics from Macalester College. She was recently an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (September-October 2024). Her illustrated book, Looking Inside: Room Portraits of St. Louis, was the recipient of the Lewis E. Atherton Prize for an outstanding master’s thesis on Missouri history from the State Historical Society of Missouri. Her work has also been recognized by American Illustration 42.
