I am looking for a way to create a new life after death, perhaps even a life more beautiful than the last one. By sculpting the dead body, I am looking for a way to create a photographic image, and through it, to immortalize this new life, remember it,beautiful and safe inside my frame.

This is my way of touching death without the fear. To extract it from the horrifying context perhaps and silence the anguish, connect it to a natural process and then, look at it as much as I want to without having to close my eyes.

Rigor mortis transforms the soft, vulnerable, and fragile body into a rigid, solid, and strong sculpture. It feels like another struggle for life, even though death has already taken hold, irreversibility.

I think about it and then realize that my own body has also been in a constant struggle for a long time, and with it my heart and soul.I too have become as hard as stone over the years, put on an armor in the hope of surviving the pain, which is born each day anew.

So far, I am winning this fight.I am both the sculpture of death and the beauty of life. Depends on how long it has been since the last injury and how far I have moved away from it.
Tali Ratzker