Message in the Making

Although human blood, chewed up food, a tricycle and telephone conversations don’t sound like ideal media for creating art, they’re all essentials for Phil Hansen.

Take Hansen’s portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Not only is it somehow a mildly flattering picture (a difficulty when using Jong-il as a subject, let’s be honest), but it was also created using 6,000 bandages slathered with 500mL of the  artists’ blood. 

And we've only just begun. A few years ago the Washington-born Hansen created As of April 30th 2005, a portrait of US President George W. Bush that was drawn using the names of the Coalition troops who had died fighting in Iraq, two years into war. 

For Hansen, the media he uses cannot be separated from the  message of his art. Take his use of the Bible – once photocopied a nd rearranged to create a portrait of notorious white-power group the Ku Klux Klan; and again reshuffled to form a lightbox representation of African-American rights activist Rosa Parks.    

And although it sometimes gets a little gross (check his Goodbye Art - See Food, in which he bought “one of every pastry” from Starbucks, chewed them up then regurgitated them to form a pretty good likeness of Britney Spears), when the message is tied up in the medium that’s half the fun.

 Check our more of Phil Hansen. You can also see him in action on YouTube and delve into his blog.