Client: Art Students League of New York

Overview

Portrait of t. is a life-sized bronze sculpture created using 3D scanning and 3D printing. It was commissioned by the Art Students League of New York, together with the New York City Parks Department, and will be installed in Riverside Park North in Summer 2023.

All my artworks begin with a 3D laser scan of a person. This scanner was never designed to capture the human body in motion–when confronted with a moving form, the machine receives conflicting spatial coordinates and generates incomplete images – a 3D motion blur. I use this damaged data to create 3D printed sculptures, prints, video and VR/AR artworks. My fragmented forms draw inspiration from funeral and memorial sculpture, and can read as faux-historical forgeries and/or contemporary relics.

This sculpture is a portrait of tiger west, a musician and artist. It is drawn from my larger series of sculptural portraits which depict people who have undergone life-altering physical transformations. I found models largely via social media, and the people who came forward all had unique stories. I asked each subject to choose their own pose, so that they could perform and embody their own story. In each portrait, however technologically mediated, I sought to honor each person’s experience and their essential humanity.

Goals

Works in Public is the League’s exclusive public sculpture program in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The application process occurs in September each year.Works in Public (formerly known as Model to Monument) is a professional development program that offers artists the opportunity to create site-specific, large-scale public sculptures. The program was founded in 2010 in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Since its inception, 46 artists have completed this program and had their sculptures installed in year-long public exhibitions at Riverside Park South and Riverside Park at 145th Street. Beginning in 2022, the program has been re-conceived under the new leadership of Haksul Lee and Natsuki Takauji, alumni and former consultants of the program, and instructors at The League.

In 2023, two new public sculptures will be installed - one of them being Portrait of t. by Sophie Kahn.

Process

This work will be 3D printed and cast in upstate New York. Welding and finishing will take place in New York and the work will be installed in the park in July/August 2023, with an unveiling in September.

Additional Information

My work Portrait of t. began as a digital file: a 3D scan of New York musician and performance artist tiger west. Using ZBrush and other sculpting programs, I spent months editing and sculpting the 3D file, and the work was then 3D printed in plastic and cast in bronze, before final finishing with nickel plate. I asked tiger to describe the piece in their own words. They write “tiger presents their body as a divided subject, marked by the collision of cancer and a trans identity. The portrait reveals a truth in embodiment, fragmented parts sculpted into being.” Portrait of t. is drawn from a larger series of 3D scanned, sculptural portraits of people who have undergone life-altering physical transformations of all kinds - pregnancy, accident and injury, illness, ageing, body modifications, and gender transition and affirming surgeries. My work depicts individuals who often seem caught in private moments of reflection or reverie. Even though they are fragmented by technology, their gestures still read as emotional and very human. The gaps and holes allow the viewer to see the river and the city framed through the figure’s body.