Polymeric Śarīra - Saint-Côme
2025
Verre soufflé, impression 3D
Dimensions variables (25 × 20 × 20 cm fermé,
et 50 x 30 x 40 cm lorsque le couvercle est ouvert)
Inspired by the Buddhist tradition of śarīra sacred relics produced from the bodies of monks after cremation this sculpture imagines their equivalents in the age of plastic.
What if the microplastics accumulated in our bodies were to become the relics of the future?
The artist places these “synthetic calcifications” inside a blown-glass ampoule, itself embedded within a miniature architectural structure inspired by Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Montpellier, a former bishopric that became a cathedral in 1536, adjacent to the Faculty of Medicine.
This architectural reference evokes the moment when care and surgery began to detach themselves from the religious domain.
The work thus exists between relic and symptom, between sanctity and pathology: a fragment of matter destined to become, in the future, the sign of a new spirituality of the body.
It also evokes the idea of the body’s physical eternity this notion of bodily integrity valued in certain religions where care and materiality become the new vectors of the sacred.
Polymeric Śarīra - Saint-Pierre, 2025
Verre soufflé, impression 3D Dimensions variables (25 × 25 × 25 cm fermé, et 60 x 30 x 40 cm lorsque le couvercle est ouvert)
Inspired by the Buddhist tradition of śarīra sacred relics produced from the bodies of monks after cremation the artist questions their contemporary equivalent.
What if the microplastics accumulated in our bodies were to become the relics of tomorrow?
Mona Young-eun Kim imagines these “synthetic calcifications” as the first traces of a plastic evolution, redefining the sacred in the posthuman era.
The sculpture encloses a fragment of plastic within a blown-glass ampoule, placed at the center of an architectural structure inspired by the first anatomy amphitheatre of Montpellier, reconstructed through 3D printing.
Thus, the relic sealed within layers of glass and polymer undergoes a transformation: waste today, sacred vestige tomorrow.
Blown glass produced with glassblower Guillaume Roux
Design and 3D printing: Robert Hulland (Azurparang Studio)
Inspired by L 2510: Transformation of the former bishopric: creation of a new anatomy amphitheatre and a chemistry laboratory.
Copy of the Statutes of Conrad, 1220, from the Cartulary of Maguelonne.
Manuscript copy dating from 1339–1373.
Document preserved at the Departmental Archives of Hérault, reference G 1423.