The Eternal Smile is an intimate and deeply personal artwork that seeks to preserve the fleeting gesture of a smile. The teeth of a deceased person are cast in resin and set within a strict, black frame. In their arrangement, the teeth form the curve of a smile.
The work is at once painful and tender: a smile is normally ephemeral, a brief expression of joy. Here, the smile is frozen in time, preserved in resin, eternally present. The Eternal Smile is both homage and prayer for closeness — an attempt to hold onto a trace of love that death cannot erase.
Spectators are kindly requested to hand over the teeth of their deceased loved ones to the artist, so that he may create a new artwork from them.
But maybe it is the artwork that smiles?
Conceptual Themes:
Love Beyond Death The economy of sympathy and the weaponization of sentimentality