paul wirhun :: skulls

egg/art: skulls

As a sculptural space, the eggshell allows for a unique and intimate view into our humanity. An extension of this work has been the skull series, which has garnered a lot of attention and is some of my most popular work. Skull eggs fuse the image of death onto the symbol of life, creating an artistic play on the tension between our hopes and our ultimate demise. This dynamic gives the skullys a potency and a relevance in our present times.

Skulls are dyed black and then scratched and bleach-painted; they are also sanded after being lacquered. After seeing a photo of disinterred skulls from a mass grave in Iraq on the front page of the NY Times during the summer of 2003, I began mounding skulls together to create my first multi-egg sculptures. A further development of these ideas can be seen in THE SKULL PROJECT, a public art ritual that commemorated all those killed during the Iraq war.