gallowhill:

Mark Quinn, Lucas, 2001

Last year I had a son. In the days after his birth, I made a series of clay portraits of his head until I got one right. It was a way of physically getting to know him. When he was born, I kept his placenta. This sculpture is a cast of that clay head in the placenta, kept frozen at eighteen degrees centrigrade, again in silicone. It’s like a baby on a life-support system. It’s about the emergence of his identity. (…)