Art pieces were poisoning sculptor
At first, Gillian Genser thought the headaches and vomiting were just the latest signs of autoimmune disorders she had battled for years. But then the symptoms got stranger. She felt agitated. She’d wake up nearly unable to move. Hearing vanished from one ear. Her muscles cramped and her speech slurred.
What was going on? For years, doctors were baffled by what was afflicting the Toronto-based sculptor.
Then, a blood test three years ago came back positive for heavy-metal poisoning. And Genser realized her art was killing her.
“I was flabbergasted,” said Genser. “Absolutely flabbergasted.”
For 15 years, Genser had been grinding up mussel shells to create a sculpture of Adam, the first man. She had no idea, though, that mussels can accumulate toxins, like lead and arsenic, over years of feeding in polluted waters. When Genser breathed in the shell dust or touched the powdery remains, some of that metal made its way into her body.
“The work was an environmental statement. It’s about reconsidering what people’s first perception of the ecosystem should have been, rather than this idea that we have dominion over all the animals,” she said. “So it’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense, because we poisoned the world starting with this very poor notion?”
Genser, 59, began sculpting with unorthodox media in 1991, when she started selling small sculptures in Toronto made from egg shells before moving on to projects crafted with coral, bones and plants. In 1998, she finished a sculpture of Lilith, the first woman in Jewish folklore, made from egg shells. She decided her next project would be the first man, Adam, and soon found the perfect material to make him: Blue mussel shells from Canada’s Atlantic coast, bought in bulk in Toronto’s Chinatown.
But almost immediately after starting the work, Genser started feeling ill.
“To be fair to my doctors, they did ask me, ‘Are you working with anything toxic?’ And I’d say, ‘No, no, I’m working with all natural materials, and we’d all move on,’ ” she said.
“I stop to think about the mussels and how they cannot leave their polluted habitats we have just dumped all this poison into,” she said. “I feel terrible grief for them. We did this to them, they didn’t do it to me.”