HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARILYN | Women Unite Series | HYPNOTIQ
An original contemporary artwork by Arian Lori-Amini, known professionally as HYPNOTIQ.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARILYN takes one of the most recognisable faces in modern culture and uses it to say something about what recognisability costs. It is part of the Women Unite Series, created to raise awareness of women's rights, resilience and the unseen emotional wounds carried by countless women.
The work. Beauty can be radiant on the outside while carrying invisible fractures within, and this sculpture makes that literal. The piece began as a full scale Marilyn Monroe figure, handcrafted in the studio. Once it was complete, it was deliberately shattered, then painstakingly reconstructed by hand. Every break, crack and seam was left visible in the final composition, so the damage is not repaired out of the work but built permanently into it. Destruction is not hidden; it is the record of survival.
The form. The reconstructed figure emerges dramatically from a painted industrial oil drum, lit by a glowing Happy Birthday neon installation. Marilyn appears to be bursting from the birthday cake, referencing the legendary performance, while the fractures across her body reveal the emotional cost sitting behind the most famous smile in the world. The drum is painted in saturated magenta and violet, and the neon script cuts across it in a single bright line.
Why it is distinctive. Most tribute sculpture flatters its subject. This one refuses to, and the refusal is what gives it weight. The technical difficulty is considerable: breaking a finished sculpture and rebuilding it by hand means every fragment has to be located, re-joined and stabilised without losing the original form.
For the collector. A large scale statement work for a gallery, a lobby, a collector residence or an exhibition context, and a piece that carries a genuine subject rather than decorative appeal. It suits collectors building collections around women artists and women centred subject matter, contemporary figurative sculpture, and works with a documented conceptual position.
Specifications
Series: Women Unite
Construction: full scale handcrafted figure, intentionally shattered and hand reconstructed with all breaks and seams left visible
Base: painted industrial oil drum
Lighting: glowing Happy Birthday neon installation
Dimensions: available from the studio on request
This work is an independent artistic interpretation by HYPNOTIQ. It is not produced under licence from, endorsed by, or affiliated with any rights holder.
Studio: HYPNOTIQ, Seattle, Washington. Designed, fabricated and hand finished in the artist studio.
