Woman Artist Turns Self Into Human Skin Rug

No, that’s not a deflated woman. It’s Chrissy Skin Rug, a work of art created by New York-based sculptor Chrissy Conant. What is it? A silicone rubber cast of herself. To make it, she shaved her body, coated herself in Vaseline, and lay spread-eagle on the floor, where she was covered with molding material. It’s like a bear skin rug—only she‘s the animal. According to Conant, the piece was inspired by her relationship to her parents. “Parental influences from childhood continue to suppress me,” she notes, “long after I have grown up and they have gone.” After the jump, find out how she made it.

To exorcise a part of my psyche that feels powerless and objectified, I laid fully shaven, covered with Vaseline, and immobilized for hours, in a spread eagle position, while being covered with bucketfuls of gelatinous mold-making material. With the impressions, I made a life-sized, flesh-colored silicone rubber cast of myself as a human skin rug. The upturned head has long, perfectly coifed, wavy hair, that echoes the ripples in the flayed skin’s edge. The glossy-lipped mouth is open in a sexually suggestive way, and the glass eyes, complete with fantasy-length lashes, stare up submissively from the rustic wood floor section, upon which the rug is magnetically attached.

[BuzzFeed]