Box Vox

packaging as content

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December 2, 2009

Jac Leirner’s Lung

Lung

Upper left & lower left photos: from Dutchnatasja’s Flickr Photostream; photo on right: from My Standard Break From Life’s Flickr Photostream

Maybe this should be my last post about Marlboro cigarette packaging. It started out innocently enough with the “flip top box” research, but I as I keep finding more and more Marlboro-related topics, it’s starting to feel a bit too much like chain smoking. Someone might mistake boxvox for some kind Marlboro brand “fan” site—the smoker’s equivalent of, say, the “Method Lust” blog. And It’s not like I’m a smoker. I can quit any time.

Which brings us to Brazilian sculptor, Jac Leirner. Like John Norwood—(who we covered: here)—the raw materials for her artwork above (entitled “Lung”) were accumulated via the artist’s own cigarette habit.

Lung (1987) was made at the time she gave up smoking. 1200 Marlboro packets (three year’s smoking) were dismembered into their constituent parts: each part, massed together, became a distinct sculptural entity and metaphor for the Lung. Together these made up the ensemble of the exhibition. One was made of the cellophane strips that you pull off first. another with the foil inner-wrappings. another with the price tags. and so on. Only the cigarettes were not there: they’d ‘gone up in smoke’.

Transcontinental: Nine Latin American Artists
By Guy Brett

(A photo of this sculpture from a distance, after the fold…)


MomaLung

“Lung” 1987, (Marlboro cigarette packages strung on a polyurethane cord); photo from the Museum of Modern Art 

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

No Responses to “Jac Leirner’s Lung”

  1. Jonny Hamachi says:
    March 17, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    Welcome to the Society!