hydrolied collagen and air bubbles, 12ft x 4ft 5 ft

Created during an artist residency at Carlos Amorales’ studio in Mexico City (June–August 2017), this sculptural work was conceived as a performative gesture in dialogue with natural forces. Constructed from biodegradable materials and intentionally left exposed to the elements during the rainy season, the piece was designed to be impermanent—to erode, collapse, and ultimately disappear.

Rather than resisting decay, the sculpture embraced it. Its slow disintegration was not a failure of form but its final, intended stage: a surrender to entropy and a collaboration with weather, time, and microbial life. What remains is not an object, but its afterlife—captured only through photographic documentation and a time-lapse video tracing its transformation and eventual dissolution.

This ephemeral work challenges the notion of permanence in sculpture, shifting the focus from material endurance to the poetics of disappearance. It invites reflection on cycles of growth and decay, authorship and relinquishment, and the quiet, often invisible forces that shape all living and built forms.

bastard #2  ( 2018)

MAGDALENA  DUKIEWICZ