That “Fallen Angel” is Just a Sculpture

waffles

July 29, 2015

Photos which have circulated heavily online allegedly show a real fallen angel that was discovered in London. It’s actually just a sculpture.

Fallen Angel

The images in question show a person with gray hair in a white robe with a large set of wings. The angel is face-down and appears to be in a mesh enclosure.

Although a fake back-story was circulated along with photos on some low-brow websites, the “angel” is no more than a sculpture by two Chinese artists which dates back to 2008. It can be found on the artists’ website here. The description of the sculpture reads:

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu’s works always start with a paradox. Their early objects and installations are made from real cadavers or human fat tissues. Yet, even though playing on the speculative and the spectacular, they focus on the investigation of the paradox rather than merely exploiting the spectacular. The tension between the bodies, organic tissues or animals and their artistic manifestations corresponds to the transposition of subjects from the plane of immanence onto the plane of transcendence. In their recent installations using hyper-realistic sculpture, they reverse their original practice: imagination and mythological subjects penetrate into the realm of everyday life and reality Angel, a life-size sculpture in fiber-reinforced polymer and silica gel of a fallen angel is typical of this new approach The angel, an old woman in a white gown and with featherless wings, is lying face-down on the ground;. maybe sleeping, maybe dead, but certainly immobile and frozen into an all too realistic image The supernatural being, now nothing more than an impotent creature, can neither carry out any supreme will nor be of any help to those believing in its existence The angel is true but ineffective; dreams and hopes are sincere yet vain.

This is not the first time a “fallen angel” mis-caption has circulated online. In 2012, a “surveillance video” was passed around on social media which allegedly showed an angel landing in a parking lot. It was actually part of an advertising campaign for a brand of cologne from several years earlier.

Bottom Line

Photos depicting a “fallen angel” which was allegedly discovered in London actually show a sculpture by two Chinese artists from 2008.