Ghost name

Fusão

Acquisition

Instagram
1tth September 2016

Artefacts

Interactions with a stranger

Fusão is from Instagram. He looked to me like a mediterranean super man, that jawline. He (even though it was text) has a super friendly vibe and even gave me a little pep-talk to solider on with my work when I was feeling a little flat (more on that in creative process). When I had gotten his real name I broke my 'personal art rule' of not searching online for the person I'm about to work on. For some reason I was curious, he did have a digital history and it seemed like he was one of those really highly achieving / has it all together people. Queue the envy.

Reporting on the creative process

He offered multiple videos with one of them a heroic pose, chest out - head up. When overlaid onto the model of him looking straight forward I found myself liking that mixed angle change in the same image. I have been doing lots of drawing training of late (shape of heads, the way the bones sit under it) I was instantly curious about how his skull would look. I decided I was going to somehow incorporate one (very dark I know). I found a plastic skeleton and also scanned that into 3D (see the test above). It was then a matter of finding the best placement for it in 3d.

So I mentioned in interactions about how he was nice, super achieving and 'the jaw', this all played into my headspace. I found it ridiculously hard to distance myself from what he would think VS what I was doing. No one wants to make someone feel bad through what they're doing, especially if what they're doing is exposing a fake skull under their skin. The direct result of this is that I now both enjoy & fear this image I've made. Enjoy it because it took on my initial vision quite well, but fear it because I ultimately ended up having the issues which started this project in the first place, it's hard to work on someone when you care about their feelings - only now that issue is extending out into total strangers. This project is based on finding beauty from a stranger as a "raw" starting point to extend on, but I think it's good to question now and then how much of the original person is destroyed for this exploration of visual aesthetics - what does that mean to me, and maybe what does that mean to them as well.