Stella's Stoichiometry (Seven years, all things renewed, 40 lbs.)
2019
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The human body rejuvenates itself every seven years, replacing all the material in the body with new material — or so the oft-quoted claim goes. Taking this notion to heart, I created an updated version of the piece Stella's Stoichiometry at seven years of age and her corresponding body weight.
This 40-pound version still accounts for every atom of her body, although from different ingredients than the original, reflecting the kinds of things she has been exposed to, taken in, and perhaps sometimes has made part of her own body. Given the modern world that she has grown up within, this includes fertilizers (providing the nitrogen and phosphorous taken in by way of the industrial food system), bituminous coal (powering the electric lights around her and whose combustion creates the carbon dioxide that warms the planet), LEGOS plastic (which she loves to build her own worlds out of - but which also represent a ubiquitous pollutant , and chalk (a device of learning and growth but also an abundant mineral in Kansas, where this version of the portrait was assembled).
Calculated exactingly for her weight at seven-years-old, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, hydrogen, and calcium was collected in her precise weight and proportions in the form of: tap water, MAP fertilizer, LEGOS plastic, bituminous coal, chalk ,ethyl alcohol, and ammonium nitrate.
*see the companion work Stella's Stoichiometry (All things being equal, 6 lbs. 13 oz.)