Dutch artist makes gun from her own skin

22 April 2004

AMSTERDAM — Dutch artist Joanneke Meester has put more than her personal feelings into her latest piece to protest at rising violence in society – she used her own skin to make a tiny gun.

A surgeon friend scraped a 20 centimetre section of skin from Meester’s abdomen under local anaesthetic to provide the raw materials for the work of art. Meester then used the skin to cover plastic bars to make a three-by-six centimetre pistol.

Describing the consistency as “rubbery and cold”, the 38-year-old Amsterdam artist maintains she had no choice but to use her own skin for the gun.

“Otherwise it would lose its expressiveness,” she told newspaper De Volkskrant. It is easy to shoot someone, she said, “until you realise it is skin that is being pierced.”

She said the artwork underlined her “concern at the rising level of violence in society”.

The ‘skin gun’ will be on public display at the Kunstvlaai art fair in Amsterdam from 8 to 16 May.

Subject: Dutch news