Reconstruction of the body
When facial reconstruction is required, science employs a variety of techniques; scientific data of skulls, shapes, skin thicknesses and muscle groups and things like age and gender. All of these data together ultimately produces a scientific reconstruction. In doing so, it is primarely the skull that forms often the start of a total reconstruction.

A true copy of my own body
Skeleton / Self-portrait 21 is a reconstruction based on a 3D copy of my own skull (“Vera Icon”), via the CT scan I had done of my own skeleton. A forensic anthropologist anonymously received this 3D copy of my skull, with the only information that it was a western European male age in his mid-forties.

A scientific self-portrait
By using available scientific documentation on location, year, climate, tissue structure, skin thickness and muscle groups, the forensic anthropologist finally realized ‘my’ facial reconstruction. The result came in clay in my studio. I had this cast in bronze. Skeleton / Self-portrait 21 is a self-portrait created, paradoxically, not by me as an artist, but with the help of based on scientific data.