Title: Ode to unwanted noses, no.1–9
Size: 25 x ≈ 5 cm, plint 3 x 3 x 3 cm
Material: Porcelain, titanium
Year: 2015
ABOUT: Ode To Unwanted Noses (OTUN)
A collection of documentary sculptures of nine discarded noses. The castings are based on perfectly functional authentic noses before modified by cosmetic surgery. The work is created to preserve and celebrate natural biological human shapes. The copies are made in porcelain, both fragile and hard, like human bone. They are initially made for an exhibition at the Moscow State Biological Museum. One vision behind OTUN is a future where authentic biological human shapes are so rare they are conserved in Museums.
The making
Finding people with noses in process of change, and who wanted to get their noses copied, before their planned cosmetic surgery, wasn´t easy. After sending out letters to several clinics, and no response except one texting: We don’t do nose jobs, I finally got in touch with a plastic surgeon using 3D technology in their business. The clinic offered personalized 3D masks, identical replicas of the customers’ faces, to help them see and feel the change to come. The clinic sent me the nose-parts from the masks, on which I based my replicas.