DNA Zygotic

DNA Zygotic is one of the most iconic of the mutated mannequins created by Dinos and Jake Chapman and has featured in several of the artists' most significant exhibitions and publications, as well as those which charted the rise of the Young British Artists. Taking its name from the term for a fused cell or a fertilised ovum, here the meaning is ambiguous: this creature appears to be less the product of a womb than of genetic engineering. This twelve-headed, four-legged mutant does not seem to recognise its lot in this world; instead, the angelic faces appear calm and satisfied, pointing to the sky at something for all the heads to see. The Chapmans have managed to create a chimera that highlights the way in which genetic engineering is sliding down a slippery slope, resulting in a life-form that appears absurd yet self-propagating. Meanwhile, those sport shoes imply that, regardless of its cumbersome upper half, this mutant can move.

The presence of the status symbol trainers and the sexual organs in this infantile creature highlight the way in which modern society, through the sexualising and market forces of advertising, are taking away the youthful innocence of childhood while also homogenising people. At the same time, there is a glorious air of innocence about this supposed monster. With its youthful looks repeated in all twelve faces and the hieratic gesture of the left hand, DNA Zygotic recalls the painting of St. John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci, himself the famous designer of the Universal Man and a genius who partook in ghoulish experiments to further humanity. DNA Zygotic, then, may be the prophet - or harbinger - of a new age of innocence, albeit a post-human innocence of the flesh quite distant from the world today.