In her project called ‘Stranger Visions’, NYC-based artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg creates sculpted faces of people—all of whom she has never met—by using their DNA.
Collecting discarded pieces of gum, cigarette butts and loose hair, she extracts the DNA from these samples and uses a software to turn them into creepy life-like human masks, which she hangs on gallery walls—like mounted heads.
According to Dewey-Hagborg, she said that her inspiration for the project came to her during a therapy session.
“I was sitting staring at this very mundane print on the wall and I noticed that in the glass covering the print there was a crack, and in that crack was lodged a single hair. I kept staring at this hair and wondering whose it could be and what I could know about them for it. Walking home later that day I became cognizant of all the genetic material surrounding me, and the idea for Stranger Visions materialized.”
[via Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Smithsonian]