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Madame Seraphina Nightshade

Mixed media installation

181.102 H x 54.61 D x 60.96 W (71.3h x 21.5d x 24w in)

In collaboration with Justin Ramsden

This is your future

It is everyone and everything’s future

For the living must die

What do you see when the past stares back at you, and how do you face the inevitable when it’s presented as a cold truth?

A relic of bygone carnivals, Madame Seraphina stands as a specter from a forgotten era. Her animated gaze offers not fortune but a cold reminder of the inescapable fate shared by all. As visitors approach, her head tilts and swivels, eyes darting with a lifelike eeriness, and her mouth opens and closes, offering a glimpse into the mechanical soul within. With each movement, she draws the viewer deeper into her unsettling presence.

The card, bearing only this stark truth, links the viewer to an impersonal finality, ushered forward by the whir of her mechanical limbs. Beneath the veneer of the old-time carnival aesthetic, Madame Seraphina invites a confrontation with mortality. Her face, sculpted in silicone, remains frozen in a timeless expression, reflecting the silent inevitability that looms over us all. The QR code on the reverse side connects to her cryptic, digital presence, further emphasizing the stark dichotomy between the physical and virtual, between the human and the mechanical.

In this interactive piece, the viewer is not simply an observer but a participant in a fleeting moment of engagement with fate. Madame Seraphina’s message is not one of comfort, but of a reminder, delivered in the chilling embrace of nostalgia, that all things come to an end.

Note:

Inspired by the great automata of the past, this work merges invention and sculpture.

Beneath its theatrical exterior lies an eight-axis robotic system, fully self-designed and fabricated.

It is not a restoration or reproduction, but a contemporary machine constructed from an original design.