21 Grams — Put Your Loved Ones’ Ashes in This Glass Vibrator Cause Why Not?
For those who want love eternal to be taken literally, artist Mark Sturkenboom has the perfect product for you!
This is NOT a futuristic sewing kit.
What you’re looking at is part of an art installation at the Milan Design Week called 21 Grams (based on the reference that a human soul weighs 21 grams).
This gold-colored urn is placed inside a glass vibrator and also comes with a memory box including a necklace and a music speaker that will play a song that reminded you of the deceased and a scent diffuser.
Here’s how he described 21 Grams on his website, plus some more pictures after the jump:
21 Grams is a memory-box that allows a widow to go back to the intimate memories of a lost beloved one. After a passing, the missing of intimacy with that person is only one aspect of the pain and grieve. This forms the base for 21 Grams.
The urn offers the possibility to conserve 21 grams of ashes of the deceased and displays an immortal desire. By bringing different nostalgic moments together like the scent of his perfume, ‘their’ music and reviving the moment he gave her her first ring, it opens a window to go back to moments of love and intimacy. She is able to have an intimate night with her sweetheart again. The cabinet functions also as an acoustic amplifier. In the back of the cabinet there is room for an iPhone, the music plays their music through the ‘forget me not’ flowers on the inside of the cabinet.
The key to this cabinet is also a golden collier. So that she is the only one who can access the cabinet. 21 Grams is not only a way to tempt a person to revive an intimate night with her love again but also displays an accusation against the unavoidable passing of life.
Sure, it’s a strange concept for your loved ones’ ashes, but this doesn’t even compare to the other things people do with ashes. Plus, Sturkenboom’s reasoning for his invention is actually kind of sweet. The artist revealed that the concept behind the sex toy came from a widow he met. Sturkenboom felt that the regular urn the widow had which encased her late husband didn’t reflect the way she spoke about him and that his invention was simply “a memory box that allows a widow to go back to the intimate memories of a lost beloved one.”
While it’s not going to be selling anywhere anytime soon, Sturkenboom hopes that people will look beyond the “sex toy” aspect of it and really appreciate the metaphor behind his creation.
