In 2008, Tony Matelli unveiled Meat Head, a sculpture and collage that lays bare the tension between decay and regeneration, vulnerability and transformation. The piece confronts viewers with an unsettling fusion of human features and raw, decomposing matter, challenging them to look beyond the surface—both literally and metaphorically. Its stark realism elicits both fascination and discomfort, evoking the fragile impermanence of the human condition.

“My idea of self-portraiture has always been kind of loose. I rendered myself and began putting my image in the work, and then I put approximations of my image in the work. And there are contradictions embedded in Meat Head. It is a story about doom and hope; there is decay and gore, but there is also new life and hope represented in the maggots—a kind of resurrection story.” — Tony Matelli