78 Tarot Carnival

The 78 Tarot Project's premise is the most literal collaboration in deck publishing: seventy-eight artists worldwide, one card each, and Carnival is the global collective's third outing, a wild trip to the circus with a Venetian Carnivale inflection. The format guarantees what single-artist decks cannot and forbids what they promise: every card is a fresh voice, and no two cards share a style, so the deck reads as an exhibition rather than a vision. Carnival is a shrewd theme for that structure, since a midway is already a strip of competing spectacles, and the masked Venetian register gives the variety a unifying costume. Reading with it means changing interpretive gears card by card, which some readers find exhilarating and others exhausting; both are correct. It suits collectors of the collaborative wave, circus-and-mask aesthetes, artists scouting seventy-eight portfolios at once, and readers who prefer a chorus to a soloist. Those needing stylistic unity should buy a one-hander and visit this as a fairground.