I’m a New York-based German artist best known for my body-related performances, for employing animal flesh and organs in what is typically viewed as rather conceptually-oriented work, for making memorial portraits out of the cremated remains of people and animals, for my large body of unique artist’s books, and for using all sorts of natural and “non-art” materials in the creation of my work.
In the projects Skin, (2006), Heads and Tales (2009), and Not a Rose (2012) I addressed moral, ethical, aesthetic, epistemological, ontological, and political issues raised by the human use and abuse of nature through bodies of sculptural and documentary work made from detritus of the animal-slaughter industry.
In my project, Icons in Ash (2008, for private purposes only; then, 2017 – present), I create portraits using their subjects’ own cremated ashes. I have found that they produce powerful, sometimes disconcerting but more often consoling, effects in those who live with them and, I believe, propose a healthier, more integrated attitude toward death, while re-opening natural pathways through grief. See images below.
Having grown up on a pig farm in Germany, animals, death, and detritus were constant presences in my early life, and my art obsessions developed naturally, indeed unconsciously, from the wellsprings of my experience.
Icons in Ash, Lena Sereda 1968-2004 
Icons in Ash, Joseph Petracca 1930-2015 
Icons in Ash, Germaine A.A.Charbonneau 1920-2008
Contact
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/iconsinash
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website: heidehatry.com