Biodegradable sculpture in hydrolyzed collagen, hair, nails, fish bones, air bubbles, 3ft x2ftx2ft

Bastards is a sculptural series that invokes the figure of the intruder—the outsider, the anomaly, the one who doesn’t belong. This bastard presence becomes a catalyst for interrogating dominant narratives around what is considered normal or strange, real or artificial, human or nonhuman.

Each sculpture is composed of hydrolyzed collagen, embedded air bubbles, and organic remnants—hair, nails, fragments of fish skeletons. Their fleshy, tissue-like surfaces resemble hybrid skins, evoking a sense of interspecies entanglement. These works are not only materially alive—they are biologically unstable, destined to degrade, dissolve, or even be consumed. In resisting permanence, they challenge the traditional fetish of the art object and propose instead a radically temporal, vulnerable form.

These forms emerge from a philosophical inquiry into shared embodiment. Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of the “being singular plural”—our essential condition of co-existence—frames this work. Identity does not precede relation; we become ourselves through proximity, through exposure to others, through the cohabitation of physical space. As Antonio Damasio has argued, the Self arises not in isolation, but through the relational frictions of embodied life.

bastard#1  (2017)

MAGDALENA  DUKIEWICZ