Power Toilet Death Masks

Power Toilet Death Masks is a set of molds for casting death masks of sanitary equipment: a toilet, a tap, a toilet paper holder with roll, a tile, and a flush button. The molds were made from objects found in the restroom at the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The restroom is a private space, accessible only to powerful people, in the headquarters of a global effort to curtail the effects of the climate crisis. Cast in unfired clay, the resultant sculptures capture a fragmented likeness of this space, as if it has been partially memorialized at the moment of its demise. 

Power Toilet Death Masks suggests a future in which human infrastructure has been put on display as an archeological curiosity. Our ingenious hygienic inventions have been given a second life in clay: a delicate, brittle material that will soon return to earth. After being displayed, the sculptures are destroyed and recycled. Defying the usual logic of preservation and permanence, the work treats its materials as circular—they revert to their original condition, so they may be used again.