Macabre Mannequins

For Art Circuit 2006, Doppelgänger Effekt wanted to do something special and unique, so we created our own stage props. Etienne discovered, at a garage sale in Sherbrooke, some extra-creepy mannequins that were just asking to be turned into crazy works of art.

One of these was a little boy (at least we're assuming it was, since it lacked genetalia) without arms. We turned it into a fall forest spirit thing by painting his whole body white, except for his face, adding arms & dollar store plastic vines. The hair was made by gluing random pieces of plastic folliage & pieces of a large feather to the boy's head. The arms were made from a long pvc tube which we painted, sawed into smaller pieces & attached together with bent hangers & rags wrapped around the joints. The hands were made out of bent solder. We also attached the boy's feet to a sturdy square board to which we glued rocks. Finally, we made the plastic vines look more realistic by dirtying them up, wrapped these around the boy's body, & then painted leaf patterns a little bit everywhere. A bunch of red plastic grapes were placed in his hand.

The second mannequin was the top half of a woman with one arm & no hands. We painted her completely black, & then sawed open the back of her head in order to put a small strobe light inside. Her eyes were drilled out & and aluminum foil was glued to the inside of her head to make the light coming out of her eyes brighter. She's not finished yet, but the plan is to paint a skeleton pattern in white on top of her already black skin & give her some sort of lower body & arms.