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"I was so weak, my body was so weak, I thought," I just want to finish the job before I die. "
The Adam Sculpture and the Artist Gillian Gensen
Gillian Genser is a visual artist originally from Toronto, Canada, who has spent years experiencing severe headaches, vomiting and weakness, which she has always badociated with an autoimmune disease. But he had never felt as bad as when he had started working on a sculpture that would represent Adam, "the first man".
"I sat down at work and thought my life was ending," he told the BBC. Nevertheless, she was determined to complete the sculpture, which lasted 15 years.
Genser's work incorporates a variety of natural materials, such as seashells, corals, bones, horns and skulls of animals, obtained in an ethical manner. "I have a great love for nature and she is often more beautiful than anything an artist can create."
The work of Gillian Genser is made from natural materials
For more than 15 years, Gillian worked on Adam's sculpture, using a material that he thought was perfect: blue mussel shells, which live in the waters off the Atlantic coast of Canada. Canada. "The mussel shells were perfect for making Adam's stretch marks reproduce such muscle fibers."
As an environmentally conscious artist, Gillian was delighted to be able to sculpt with materials from a nearby ecosystem. In addition, he liked the play on words: "the muscles are in molluscs".
But during the creation of the work, Gillian's health began to deteriorate rapidly. When she finished the sculpture, she had symptoms of severe dementia, pain that immobilized her, language problems, spatial disorientation, memory loss.
"I could not follow a line of thought, or even understand where he could put it," he reports. "I was angry, upset, anxious, desperate and with desperate suicidal instincts."
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Adam, the sculpture that poisoned the artist (courtesy of Gillian Genser)
Gillian then consults several neurology specialists and takes antipsychotic and antidepressant medications, but nothing seems to help.
Gillian Genser / BBC News Brazil
Arsenic and Lead
Finally, she was diagnosed with heavy metal poisoning. He had high levels of arsenic in his body. Then they also found lead.
But what was the source of intoxication? "To be fair to my doctors, they always asked me if I was working with toxic materials." "I always said no, they were natural materials."
Subsequently, the experts determined that the culprits were the mussel shells. The mussels attract and accumulate the metals present in the water.
Gillian Genser cut thousands of mussel shells, which can be extremely toxic
While each part of Adam's musculature consisted of thin slices of shells, Gillian had cut thousands over the years.
It seemed ironic to Gillian, because her work wanted to express with natural elements the deformed relationship between humans (in this case, the "first man") and the environment
But even with the diagnosis, the Artist felt that she could not give up the sculpture and leave it incomplete. "I came to the door of my studio crying because I knew that the shells were poisoning me, but I could not leave the work unfinished."
Since the completion of Adam's sculpture, Gillian has begun working on other works. But, to this day, it coexists with some of the effects of poisoning.
Although he no longer works with mussel shells, all his works continue to be made of toxic materials to a certain degree. But today, the artist knows that she must pay more attention.
"I can not follow the path of repentance, we must go forward and not look back, if it is so that life has unfolded, that it be so . "
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