Here’s a sculpture that was quite fun and interesting to make: “Marylin” (2013, Papermaché)

It started with a set of coconut shells I had lying around. They reminded me of a monkey’s jaw, so I made a chimp puppet. I put the puppet on my shelf, then waited for about a year before I went further with it.

Meanwhile I had been to the christmas dinner of our art class, where I had overheared two girls in a conversation. They were talking about (mostly male) models and critiquing them in a very superficial way. These models were nothing but eye candy to them, it was actually quite shocking to me.
This conversation got me thinking of how we often idealize people, especially celebrities in a very superficial way. On the one hand people will like the attention, but that kind of attention also breaks a person. One tragic example of this is Marylin Monroe: she was THE star back in her day, THE symbol of hollywood and glamor. But it got to the point where that’s all she was. Her personality, struggles or fears didn’t matter to people, all they cared about was her looks and icon-status. This eventually led her to her tragic suicide.

So after thinking of Marylin Monroe and her life, I decided to make a sculpture based on that. That’s where the chimp puppet came in: I took it off the shelf, dusted “him” off and turned “him” into Marylin. “He” became a “She”. Basically the thought was that all the superficial attention was making her into a monkey/a show object to entertain.

The couch and diamonds in the sculpture are references from Marylin Monroe’s music video “diamonds are a girls best friend”