Echo Seireeni’s prosthetic creations are warping reality

Prosthetic artist and MUA Echo Seireeni has built a world of transformations that feels almost mythic. “I see make-up as a filter – a kind of protective mask between the model and the camera,” she says. It’s a mask that’s taken many forms across the faces of underground icons: Bladee made ghostly with airbrushed veins and gunmetal shadows, a latex-soft bunny crafted for Fontaines DC, and Eartheater crowned with horns and splashed in Pepto Bismol pink beneath the desert sun.

She champions a philosophy of make-up as an extension of self, whether literally through prosthetics or conceptually. “I’ve come to a relatively stable conclusion that make-up has always been a tool to mediate the relationship between our faces and our identity,” she says. ”In a world where many people feel [...] constantly ’perceived’ and hyper-analysed, embodying characters via face and body distortion is a powerful tool and can become a refuge from surveillance.”

Seireeni’s signature warped style is best described as unearthly, referential and theatrical – one that bloomed from an upbringing in the creative sprawl of Los Angeles and now continues in London. At first, beauty was something the artist found “terrifying and coldly beautiful.” But then the texture of products pulled her in. “I would flip through magazines at the Korean hair salon with my mum, mesmerised by these ghostly, faded faces with striking black eyes, unearthly billowing hair, and wet, dark, sharp lips,” she recalls.

That fascination with texture continues in her prosthetics today: where her recent work includes pierced talons erupting from cheeks, scarification with crosses carved into faces, and fleshy raised emblems pressed onto stomachs. Below, she drops the mask and lets us into her warped world.

What is it you do and why do you do it?

Echo Seireeni: I am a make-up and prosthetic artist and oil painter. I do it half because I want to, and half because I have to.

Can you tell us a bit about where you grew up?

Echo Seireeni: I was raised in a creative household in LA. My dad is a graphic designer and my mother is a clothing designer; my grandparents, aunts and uncles are all writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, et cetera. 

What does beauty mean to you?

Echo Seireeni: Through many years of wrestling with beauty as a concept, including its worrying relationship to distorted self-image, social signalling, and the cosmetic surgery industry, I’ve come to a relatively stable conclusion that make-up has a continuous history throughout human civilisation as a tool to mediate the relationship between our faces, and thereby our identity and expression, and outside observers.

We evolved as a highly social, face-focused species, and are incredibly sensitive to micro-expressions, facial difference, beauty, eye contact, et cetera. In a world where many people feel vulnerable, constantly ’perceived’ and hyper-analysed, embodying characters via face and body distortion is a powerful tool and can become a refuge from surveillance.

What are you trying to communicate through your work and why?

Echo Seireeni: I’m a huge fan of Adam Curtis, Hito Steyerl and of course David Cronenberg. So in short: writers and artists who have explored the relationship between technology, digitisation and the self. Increasingly I see make-up as a filter, a sort of protective mask between the model and the camera. Many models have told me that the process of getting into glam, especially prosthetics, with their theatrical connotation and history, allows them to embody a character and reduce their sense of vulnerability in front of the camera, which sometimes appears to me as a scary, impenetrable black cyclops eye.

Who is your beauty icon or favourite look of all time? 

Echo Seireeni: Isabelle Adjani in Possession or Daryl Hannah as Pris from Blade Runner. They are just such sexy, vulnerable, desirable, defiant, strong, crazy characters with perfectly imperfect make-up, costuming, hair and design. I love Adjani’s blood-smeared mouth with clear-rimmed, huge sunglasses and conservative blue dress; and Pris’ black stripe of airbrushed eye make-up and static-shocked platinum hair reads so past-present-future.

What is your current obsession?

Echo Seireeni: Lip balm. Any kind. Everywhere, on my cheeks, eyelids, hands, elbows, body, just never my actual lips, which I pathologically forget to moisturise. 

What is the future of beauty?

Echo Seireeni: I think that there is a possibility for the usage of facial prosthetics and extreme beauty to distort faces as a form of temporary resistance against facial recognition software. I also absolutely expect increasing normalisation of cosmetic surgery and body modification – in South Korea, around one in five adult women have undergone some form of plastic surgery – though I doubt we’ll all be forced to implant ourselves with sub-corneal Meta microchips any time soon. I don’t think it will be as dramatic or theatrical as we imagine it will be; like most transformative tech, like the advent of video streaming, body mods will become mundane, bizarre, ironic, erotic, and truly normal.

You’ve opted to be cryogenically frozen in hopes of continuing the human race. When you’re awoken it’ll be your responsibility to kick-start the breeding. What SFX would you wear on your first date?

Echo Seireeni: Fake pregnant belly à la @sinisaaaaa, of course. Signalling and that.