Grumpy

Photosensitive warning

Grumpy is a declaration of unrequited love. The artwork combines melodic voice recordings, CGI animation, and ceroplastic – an eighteenth-century technique for casting anatomical wax models from dissected bodies. In the film, a chilling echo of the porn industry’s production of silicone bodies for automated use is conflated with the figure of the Anatomical Venus, who is cut open to eroticize the function of the reproductive and sexual organs.

The artwork is best experienced on mobile with the sound on.

Contains some strong language and graphic images.

Sidsel Meineche Hansen

"The work is invested in the idea of the current industrial complex relating to the porn, adult entertainment and pharmaceutical industry, and how they invest in the slow mutation of the human organism."

The Digital Abject by Anne Duffau

Grumpy aims to challenge our understanding of digital intimacy. Its protagonist is a computer-generated Anatomical Venus, an Enlightenment-era wax figure used to teach medical students’ anatomy. The figure’s entire front body is cut-open and is seen singing to the viewer. The slick wax-like computer aesthetic transforms the artificial into living: a dehydrated puppet with a metallic vertebral column, suggesting industrial manufacture and clinical precision. The figure, immobile except for her moving mouth, lies dissected on the floor, revealing only her reproductive organs with a living foetus. The figure feels immediately strange and abject, with a disturbing identity yet unnervingly familiar.

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The making of

Work in progress image, Untitled (Anatomical Venus) and Grumpy. Courtesy the artist

Untitled (Anatomical Venus), 2024. Cast of 3D model and dissected sexual and reproductive organs. Beeswax, aluminum. Photos by Isabelle Arthuis courtesy Kiosk

Sidsel Meineche Hansen & Therese Henningsen, Baby Jesus, 2023. Digital video with sound. Courtesy the artists

Sidsel Meineche Hansen & Therese Henningsen, Maintenancer, 2018. Digital video with sound. Courtesy the artists

NO RIGHT WAY 2 CUM, 2015, CGI animation, HD video with sound. Still. Courtesy the artist

DICKGIRL 3D(X), 2016, still. Courtesy the artist

Sidsel Meineche Hansen and Joanne Robertson, Alien Baby, 2021. Limited edition 12” vinyl with 16 tracks. Released by Tenderbooks

Sidsel Meineche Hansen with Brynje and Design a Wave, sex robot, 2019. Limited edition 12” vinyl with 5 tracks. Released by SMK National Gallery of Denmark

Seroquel, 2014. HD video and CGI animation. Courtesy the artist

Metal Works, 2024. Ordet, Milan, IT. Photos by Nicola Gnesi, courtesy Ordet

About the Artist

Sidsel Meineche Hansen works in a variety of mediums and forms spanning wood, clay, metal, CGI animation, VR and video. Her practice explores how things are made and industrially produced, particularly relating to the gendering or functioning of objects.

Artist:

Sidsel Meineche Hansen

Figure Design & 3D Sculpting:

Sam Fuller (Arc Justice)

Technical Production Lead:

James B Stringer

Wax casting (Sexual and Reproductive Organs with fetus):

Pascale Pollier

Dissection:

Prof. Dr. Luc van Nassauw, Senior Researcher / Anatomist and BIOMAB (Biological and Medical Art in Belgium)

Commissioned by and developed in residence at Somerset House Studios. Part of the Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy programme, which explores health and well-being in the face of technological and ecological change.