The Permanent Removal of Things That are Precious, The Youme Diamonds, 2026
Three precious stones. Harvested from the intimate hairs of the artist’s body. A mining. An economy. For beauty.
Diamonds engineered from pubic, arm pit and leg hair.
“Something beautiful and precious. Taken from its original place. Harvested. And turned into a diamond.”
The Permanent Removal of Things That are Precious, raises questions about cultural aesthetic, and the emotional weight placed on the body. The final objects will be small, clear or faintly tinted stones, materially precious yet symbolically conflicted.
“My armpit hair was especially controversial and confusing to the world around me... I never went on a date with a man who didn’t bring it up. My body hair, my love for it, is something deeply culturally abnormal. It’s hard for me to understand why when I love it so much.”
In a world where the removal of body hair is expected, monetized, and violently normalized, this work frames the act of its removal, not as maintenance but as sacrifice. It asks, what is lost.. and gained, when a person parts with material parts of their body?
Body hair is framed here as both a site of intimacy and public confrontation. Once removed, it enters a new state and becomes an object of disgust, but leaves the body as more of a commodity. The final diamonds will not restore what was taken, but will insist on its worth. This gesture speaks to the tension between internal value and external validation, the erotic and the abject, the body and its extractable materials. The capitalization of the body. The marketing through shaming, of the beauty.
The Permanent Removal of Things That are Precious, is a meditation on discomfort, transformation, and beauty under capitalism, The Youme Diamonds, linger in the uneasy space between loss and luxury. Between pain and beauty. Between object and body.