Marc Quinn's Odyssey is the latest artwork by a man who has made a career out of vital fluids. His latest asks us to see that refugees bleed the same blood as the rest of us.

By David Levesley Tuesday 23 October 2018

- GQ Magazine

Marc Quinn loves a spot of blood. You can measure out his career in gallons of the stuff: his first big piece, “Self 1991”, featured litres of his own vital fluids turned into a self-portrait. Not content with one, he makes another every five years.

“I’ve always wanted to make another sculpture out of blood but I never found an idea that was compelling or strong enough,” said Marc Quinn when we spoke. Then the migration crisis took over the news and the two interests clicked.

Now Marc Quinn is working on “Odyssey”, an artwork that, when complete, will feature 2,000 litres of blood in two freezer boxes inside a transparent pavilion.

“Inside there are two freezer blocks and inside those are two red cubes, one-metre x one-metre x one metre, and those cubes are made of frozen human blood,” explained Quinn. “One is donated by refugees who have been resettled in other countries – we’re not talking about people in refugee camps – who are just beginning the next stage of assimilating, and the next one is by people who don't see themselves as refugees.”

It will start outside the New York Public Library and then travel around the world, including stops in London and Sydney and with hopes to take it to some slightly less well-trodden destinations. Alongside it there will be a video archive of interviews with all the people who donate, which will be screened as disruptions to digital advertisements in the vicinity.

“It’s about taking the work to different places to raise awareness and raise money,” the artist said. “The essential point is that your blood and anyone else’s blood is the same. When you start on that point you have to find a common humanity and find a more creative way of treating someone than demonising them.”

Half the money will go to the International Rescue Committee, a charity set up by Einstein in the Thirties and now run by David Miliband. The rest of the money will go to smaller charities, the final list of which will be decided by the board of Marc Quinn’s own charity.

This is not Marc Quinn’s first brush with public artworks by any means: you may remember him from “Alison Lapper Pregnant”, a statue atop the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square featuring the dysmelic titular artist.

He says that when you’ve got a message this important, you need to put it in front of the biggest possible number of people. “People often take the challenging content out of public artwork because they’re afraid people won’t understand it,” said Quinn. “People can still have amazing reactions to the artwork if you give them something.”

So far no blood has been collected; you can sign up to be a donor on the website bloodcube.org from tonight onwards. There will be a ballot, says Quinn, and people will be able to donate in batches. “We’re working with doctors and nurses and it’s been through a medical ethics commission. It’s being run like a medical trial to a very high standard,” he said, adding that anybody who has been told they cannot donate blood for medical reasons is able to donate for “Odyssey” due to the blood being sterilised and not having a medical use.

Quinn hopes to get blood from many different groups of refugees from around the world and is not just interested in the current generation: Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis are just as welcome as today's refugees from Syria or Myanmar.

Hopefully, Quinn says, the artwork will get people to reconnect to our common humanity. "The idea in the artwork is that society values one person and devalues the other," he said. "Both people have the same platform. We’re putting them on equivalency."