Death Masks is an installation consisting of 21 masks cast from a mold of an 11-year-old girl named Alice, the original donor of the Saos-2 bone cancer cell line. This work embodies themes of memory, identity, and transformation, using the motif of the death mask to explore the enduring presence of an individual through biological and artistic representations. The piece is divided into three interconnected series, each with its own narrative and material focus.

Death Masks: Alice Ants presents vacuum-formed representations of the young girl’s face containing live ants. These ants actively consume a mixture of Saos-2 cells and sugar embedded in the masks, highlighting the interaction between life and death. This component brings a visceral, dynamic element to the work, illustrating the processes of consumption and decay, where human cells become part of another life cycle.

Death Masks: Mutable Death Masks comprises seven masks crafted from slow-recovery polyurethane foam that incorporates living Saos-2 cells. These masks challenge the notion of change and permanence, as the inclusion of living cells suggests an ongoing mutability and the potential for continual change, resonating with the biological nature of the cells themselves.

Death Masks: Alice Becoming features a series of plaster masks that gradually degrade, symbolising the ongoing process of change and the ephemeral nature of existence. These masks reflect the slow disintegration of identity over time, emphasising the theme of becoming and transformation as inherent to all life.

Together, these series reflect on the fragile boundaries between life, death, and identity, inviting viewers to confront the ways in which remnants of life persist and evolve. Death Masks embodies a poetic meditation on transformation, underscoring how memory and matter intermingle to create new forms of existence.

This work forms part of The Absence of Alice series.