Scarified Head

Scarified Head

Faceless Head No.39
  • Dimensions: 27 × 17 cm
  • Materials: Raw terracotta, natural patina
  • Year: 2015
  • Availability: Unique piece
  • Price: Upon request
Artistic Statement of the Head

This head evokes an archaic ritual mask: its engraved lines recall symbolic scarifications, once carriers of memory and identity. The form remains deliberately closed, as if sealed, reinforcing the idea of silence and secrecy.

Artistic Statement of the Collection

Within 100 Faceless Heads, this piece reflects the tension between erasure and marking. Where the face vanishes, matter still bears traces of passage, like a sculpted palimpsest.

Symbolism

Scarification here becomes language. It symbolizes memory inscribed in flesh, rites of passage, and the endurance of tradition. The absence of human features emphasizes the universality of such marks.

The “100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” Collection

A Sculpted Memory, a Universal Story

The “100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” collection brings together one hundred unique sculptures, handcrafted from terracotta and rusted metal. These works embody the invisible faces of our collective history: undocumented migrants drowned at sea, victims of slavery, those forgotten in genocides, the anonymous whose memories are fading.

Each of these heads, deliberately devoid of features, symbolizes a life, a past, a story suspended in time. Faceless, they become the silent bearers of individual and collective memories, inviting us to reflect on our shared humanity.

A Committed and Universal Message

Through this series, the artist invites us to acknowledge these erased lives and to rebuild bridges between the past and the future. “I open the graves of the undocumented migrants who drown in the seas and in the deserts, I denounce the macabre sounds of the cannons of war…”, he affirms, thus expressing the emotional and political power of this work.

“100 Heads WITHOUT Faces” is much more than an art collection: it is a sculptural archive, a call to remembrance, to dialogue, and to a better understanding of our common roots.

Gustave Akpéhou DJONDA

Self-taught Visual Artist

Passionate about collective memory and questions of identity, the artist works with clay and metal to give form to what is often invisible or forgotten. Through the series “100 Heads Without Faces,” he offers a space for reflection and dialogue on the wounds of the past and the hopes for a more just future.

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