Within the European context, there exists a rich tradition of the shaping of stone to represent an idealised human form: one that is anatomically accurate and yet otherworldly ideal of human bodily beauty. Supposedly, through the genius of a Michelangelo figure, a block of stone can be carefully, methodically and skillfully sculpted into a predetermined form of bodily perfection. Such an artwork legitimizes the Protagoras assertion that “Man is the measure of all things.” Inevitably, this anthropocentric construction fails to acknowledge the realities of bodies, particularly within the industrial age. The body is an intrinsic manifestation of it’s environment, where the movement of pollutants between and within the environment and body that inhabits it is continuous and free-flowing.

Bodies absorb heavy metals and inorganic compounds which surround them. In this sense, the body is a vessel for human-made pollutants, and often a product of them. In London, air pollution remodels lungs and their capacity to take in air. As pollutants pass through lungs and people, how could the medium, tradition and skill of stone sculpturing be reappropriated to consider this bodily remaking: an anti-humanistic reality?

In Dan Graham's work Pier 18, the traditional assumptions of photography and the role of the photographer are disrupted, through the lack of premeditation of what is photographed. Inspired by Graham, Three Bodies, Three Atmospheres will sculpt three ‘bodies’ from blocks of stone. Rather than sculpting chiselled male bodies—a premeditated form through a skilful, careful process— the bodies sculpted in this project will be carved as a result of the intensity of PM2.5 particle pollution in different areas in London. The intensity of ‘work’ done to the stone is directly proportional to the intensity of pollution, with chiselling and grinding randomly placed across the block in intervals marked by pollution levels. This systematic, almost autogenerated process, suggests the act of mark-making as an inherently violent one, which in turn embodies not only the violence done to bodies within polluted airs but the repetitive violence of the structures of inequality that enable pollution across differentiated spaces.