Cute Babies Branded with Tattoos

“Cumulous Brand” is an unsettling title for an art project with babies. The infant sculptures and photos were visualized and developed by Dietrich Wegner. “...babies are covered in multicolored tattoos in a meditation on how our identities evolve and how we declare them,” states Wegner.

Notes from the artist’s statement:

Every society accumulates contradictions amidst their ideals. Dietrich Wegner employs those contradictions, situating opposites together in sculpture and photography that feed on the friction between two conflicting ideas. When an image stands in limbo, between associations, it occupies a flexible place in our mind. Wegner creates images that are safe and unsettling, abject and beautiful. Some of his work shows us how a mushroom cloud can resemble a tree house, an anus a vortex, a suicide bomber a vulnerable human being, all in an effort to explore our varied states of contentment and security. (…)