Not since John Travolta's awkward portrayal of Archangel Michael in Nora Ephron's 1996 fantasy/drama of the same name have we been so unnerved by a fallen angel. For this, we have Chinese artist duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu to thank.

The two have created a sculpture so realistic it rivals Paul McCarthy's (also terrifying) sculptural self-portrait. The hyperrealistic work, titled "Angel," uses silica gel, fiberglass and human hair to visualize what it would look like if an angel from the heavens above crash landed here on Earth. And it looks like an old man with chicken wings in a white dress. 

The work, although originally made in 2007, has been making the rounds online this week after it was recently installed in Beijing. The artists, however, who have been collaborating since the 1990s, are no strangers to controversy.

As explained in a statement by the Hammer Museum: "Sometimes creating a direct confrontation with their viewers, their works often tap into common fears and anxieties and challenge particular worldviews. They tease out these issues by placing their viewers in the midst of strange situations: a self-propelled garbage dumpster that crashes into gallery walls, lifelike sculptures of elderly world leaders in wheelchairs bumping into one another, and a tall column comprised of human fat removed during plastic surgeries, to describe a few."

Ah, yes, they've also used baby cadaver specimens in their work. 

Behold the heavenly freakiness and prepare to hide under your covers for the rest of time. 

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A, the beautiful if a little wayward heroine of Alexandra Kleeman's debut novel, spends a lot of time on the couch. It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, C, seems devoid of interests that aren’t at least tenuously related to Shark Week, and her roommate, B, flips through channels as a form of therapy.

When A's not getting emotionally invested in documentaries about environmental zealots or floating through her workday, she sits in front of the mirror in her bedroom, picking at her skin, analyzing her features and meticulously applying makeup.

“I always thought it was strange that no one was allowed to think about [makeup] in literature, because it’s a frivolous topic,” Kleeman said. “But in another way it’s a really timely and important topic. When mirrors were not so well-developed, or even before that when mirrors didn’t exist, your face was a blind spot. It was something other people saw, but you never saw.”

Kleeman's book -- both absurd and deeply intimate -- is full of these insightful asides. In an interview with The Huffington Post, the author discussed the weird importance of makeup in modern society and why female friendships are having a moment in fiction. 

I loved your book! Did you set out to write about body image or did it just arise naturally?

I was looking at what I’d written in the past and very few elements from my everyday life were in it. I thought things like consumer pressure and body image were not necessarily of literary heft, because they don’t seem timeless. I was frustrated with writing reality without the reality I experienced. So I wanted to include as much of that as possible.

I liked the ongoing theme that bodies are malleable and even interchangeable. What drew you to that theme?

When I was fairly young, just out of high school, my dad got seriously ill. He had cancer. On the surface he didn’t look any different. But I knew from talking to his doctor and then reading about it that something very dramatic was happening inside [of him]. It was this exercise in looking at my father and thinking that even though he looks the same, there’s a bodily crisis going on within. You wouldn’t know without that sort of special vision that a medical eye can offer. 

That was the beginning of thinking of this intense changeability that’s part of bodies. We don’t notice that our cells are turning over all the time. You get a completely new composition of cells every seven years, and on the surface, or subjectively, it looks as though you’re the same for seven years. It’s like a ground -- it looks stable, but beneath it everything is shifting all the time. It’s exciting and dangerous.

I especially like how you tied all of that in with makeup. Why did you want to write about lipstick and foundation as a way of constructing an identity?

Makeup is something that a female has to reckon with every single day. Whether you wear it or don’t, you’re always making decisions about wearing it or not, or how you’re wearing it and what that means. So I always thought it was strange that no one was allowed to think about it in literature, because it’s a frivolous topic.

But in another way it’s a really timely and important topic. If you think about 100 years ago, when mirrors were not so well-developed, or even before that when mirrors didn’t exist, your face was a blind spot. It was something other people saw, but you never saw. And that in some ways makes more psychological sense than being able to worry and care for your face all the time, and having this array of tools to look at it and see it better, and correct little things that definitely don’t have functional value.

Yeah! It’s like, our face is the seat of our identity in some ways. It’s the first thing people see. Because you can’t see yourself without this technological apparatus, I feel like it’s in some way this external object. You can cultivate it the way you cultivate Bonsai trees. It’s like a hobby. And that’s both a personal thing and a distant thing.

That reminds me of the show you invented -- a woman’s applying eyeliner and says, just put the face you want on your face! I love the way you make TV characters and commercial actors as relevant as real-life characters in the book. Do you think associating too much with TV and other fictional worlds results in a lack of self-awareness?

Sometimes I want to withhold judgement on whether something is good or bad, but I do feel like identifying with TV characters -- connecting to them emotionally more than you connect to literal, physical people in your life -- causes problems. They just don’t have the same existence or boundaries as you do. They resemble us, but they are not us. 

When I started binge-watching TV, when that became a thing due to Netflix a few years ago, the first thing I watched was "Lost." It was summer break from grad school, and I watched it all in a row, like as many hours a day as I could, as though I were clocking in at a job. You have this hunger to find out [the characters'] backstory and that gets you really involved. But they have almost no relevance to your life, or who you are.

My reality kind of inverted. All the people I was spending the day with seemed more real to me than the people I knew, and myself. It was a cool feeling. I was walking around feeling fictional. But I don’t think it was healthy.

The commercials in your book are goofy and absurd, and the characters know that, but they’re still somehow really persuasive. Are there any real commercials that you modeled your fictional ones on?

Yeah. One of the first commercials I remember being really compelled by was… do you remember when Bioré pore-cleansing strips came out? I remember seeing the commercials and they were like, this face looks normal, this person looks normal, but then you put this thing on and peel it off, and there were all these traces left on the paper that come from you, and you never imagined they were inside your skin. It looks extremely effective. Once you realized there was something hiding in your skin that you couldn’t even see, you definitely take on the impulse to eradicate it as quickly as possible. It was like magic.

They create this must out of something that never even mattered in the first place.

That commercial did what I think a lot of commercials do now -- as much as they’re selling the specific product, they’re also selling the idea of magical transformation. You use this and suddenly something will change. You can watch this happen in your own house, or your own face. 

I was reading an interview you did a while ago, where you said you liked writing about characters struggling with memory loss because they’re trying to figure out who they are from a blank slate. This book had a similar tone. Why are you drawn to this type of character? 

Part of the influence, I think, was just my longstanding love for Beckett. His language is pretty experimental, it’s stripped down. I have such intense emotional experiences when I read his work, because I feel like his characters are struggling so intensely with the most basic things, things there’s no sure solution for, especially in their fictive universes. So part of it is becoming interested in how people or characters might solve the problem of bare life if they were dealing with that problem. 

I feel lucky that the basic structure of my world is stable, and in-tact. When I was in college, doing cognitive science, I worked with aphasics, people who had had strokes and lost part of their language ability. They were complex, feeling, thinking individuals who had this trouble with this one layer we take so for granted, the ability to deploy the word you want when you want it and string words together in a way that make you appear like a person to other people. Seeing how breakdowns or obstructions of the basic mechanisms of being a person can destruct everything else -- how fragile that underlying stuff is -- really compelled me. I’m one of the better-adjusted people you might meet who thinks about that all the time.

Did your studies influence your writing in other ways?

My favorite part about being involved in science, when I was involved in science, was the moment you think of an experiment. You think of a set-up that something will result from, and a suspicion about how it’ll be resolved, but you don’t know for sure what it is. There’s that sense that something could surprise you that draws you in. I think that has a lot to do with how I write fiction. I get interested in setting something up or creating a problem. I don’t want to know upfront what the solution will be.

One of the things I liked most about your book is that even though it sounds really conceptual, it has these great scenes that illustrate female friendship. Are there other books or stories that you enjoy on that theme?

I was just talking to my editor yesterday about this. It’s becoming this exciting time for writing about female friendship, a topic that weirdly hasn’t been broached in recent literature all that much. It’s so strange. It’s such a major element of life, and it’s only appeared within the lens of what you can write about recently. I’m really into the Elena Ferrante novels. They’re so groundbreaking, because of the author’s willingness to devote an epic amount of time and detail to something that’s always been window dressing. Like, here’s a scene we throw in to tell us a little more about one of these characters. I love following those little destructions that happen even over the course of a regular friendship, and she does it so well. I think those books are making a space for more people to talk about it.

Are there other authors who write about hunger and body image that you enjoy? As you said earlier, it’s a theme that’s not covered in literature as much as maybe it should be.

I feel like it isn’t. You can make a top-ten list, and that’s maybe the list. The older works are more male writer-centered, about hunger as a way of expressing something existential. But for physical, literal hunger, maybe my favorite is this Japanese writer Yoko Tawada. Her stories, every one of them, are about a character who’s an immigrant coming to a new land, and they’re experiencing their body change as their diet changes. Who they are is very much in flux because they’re coming as a foreigner into a place, and their body shifts along with that. It’s a really cool, deeply linked person-body combination.

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It is within the realm of possibility that Jennifer Aniston is married. At the very least, she had a party at her house this weekend that maybe a pastor attended with the Bible. Before we find out for certain, it is important for us to gather as a society to figure out what this -- Jennifer Aniston maybe but not definitely being married -- means for us.

Over the years, the way the likes of InTouch and Life & Style have rallied around Aniston becoming a wife and mother resembles the efforts of a rabid dog trying to make soufflé for a competition on "Iron Chef." Once she reached the marrying-and-baby-carrying age of her late 20s, Jennifer Aniston's happiness was an automatic addition to supermarket checkout lines. By her mid 30s it had entered the zeitgeist. 

"How often do you get to reunite soul mates? What if I told you that you could reunite Romeo and Juliet? Or Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston?," Leslie Knope says toward the end of a 2009 episode of "Parks and Recreation." "Oh, Jen, I really want you to be happy. Stay away from John Mayer."

Aniston's life choices have become the automatic filler cover for slow weeks in celebrity news, a go-to that has become so obvious and enduring, it is almost impressive in its longevity. The tabloids are generally hot garbage, but why did they become so fixated on cramming Aniston into the conformist narrative of female happiness? 

The rise of tabloid culture in the early aughts meant that the realm of celebrity was no longer relegated to an actor's work, but the minutiae of her daily life. What emerged was a culture of pulpy surveillance, a Hollywood ruled by Big Brother (except if Big Brother was mostly only interested in gossip and women not wearing undergarments).

Anyway, you know that story -- Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and the year 2007, etc. The coverage became a mix of "news" and rumors provided by unnamed sources, who either didn't exist or were just some random old ladies doing acid under a bridge. Either way, Internet journalism and the 24-hour news cycle have only made things worse. Our conceptions of celebrities are now based, in large part, on a warped perception of their private life peddled by entertainment media. 

Usually, the stories that manage to break out of the tabloid pocket of hell into the mainstream range from the sadistic and scandalous to fluffier tales of two celebrities in the early stages of dating and/or being deliberately photographed holding hands on their way out of 1 Oak.

But it seems like none of the fan fiction has been as consistently fixated on marital and maternal status than the Jennifer Aniston narrative. (Consider the fact that a search for "Jennifer Aniston pregnant" yields 4.5 million Google results, a little less than double the return for "Zooey Deschanel pregnant," despite the fact that Zooey Deschanel is actually pregnant right now).

Several factors have merged into the perfect storm behind our specific obsession with Aniston.

It was bad enough one of America's sweethearts was refusing to validate the belief that a woman's main purpose in life is to be a wife and mother. (How could her decades-long career, multi-million dollar net worth and various mansions ever be enough?!) But that combined with the perceived failed marriage with Brad Pitt and the legend of Brangelina it spawned, allowed Aniston's singledom to transcend the common tabloid fare of nanny infidelity scandals and homophobic sexuality speculation. It became a wrong to be righted, if not in real life then by endless guesswork on the covers of trashy magazines.

The aspect of Aniston's success seemed to only further tragedize her singleness. As she transitioned from sit-com to rom-coms to acting so serious she was considered an Oscars snub, the faux concern was only heightened. The sinister message underlying the frenzied theorizing about her private life seemed to infer something was wrong with Jen. The lingering question, rhetorically and misogynistically asking, "She can't really be that great, if she can't find a man, right?"

In recent years, Aniston had become almost defiant, unwilling to play into the hands of the tabloids. As she moved into her 40s, there was something subversive about her interviews, even after she got engaged. She became a powerful symbol for modern womanhood, refuting the idea that happiness required some pre-fab, pre-feminism checklist.

So, now that she's (possibly) married, what if everything is actually worse? What if, as Jen Uffalussy wrote for The Guardian, "the masses [are] reluctant to let go of their desire to see a successful and independent woman like Aniston as anything but suffering in silence"? Will all successful and independent women be forced to get married or risk being put into the eternal washer-dryer cycle of getting engaged or pregnant then dumped? (Who will marry Kristen Stewart?)

What if -- and this is purely hypothetical, as hypothetical as, say, Jen engaging in polygamy and marrying Brad and Angelina in addition to Justin and then offering to adopt you -- we just valued women for their work?

What if we celebrated Jen for her success and her talent, instead of endlessly poking at the satisfaction of her private life with the determination of your little brother trying to annoy you in the backseat of a 17-hour road trip? What if we didn't need her to get married (and have a child literally tomorrow, because, let's be real the clock is ticking) to prove that she's great?

Alas, these are all pointless questions. By next week, the tabloids will find a series of Sad Singles to mourn in Jen's place. It won't be with the intensity or complexity of the decade-long Anistonian epic, but it will continue to convince us that women need to be wives and mothers to be great.

For now, at least, we know for certain that Jennifer Aniston is great. A man who played at least one of Carrie's boyfriends on "Sex and the City" has proven that. Now, if she can just give birth, we will all finally be able to get some rest.

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Raise your hand if you went to the Museum of Modern Art this summer.

I'd imagine more than a few New Yorkers are lifting an appendage, confessing to having seen either the museum's massive flop homage to Björk or the soon-to-close exhibition devoted to 10 years of Yoko Ono's avant-garde career. Both of these shows were marketed as the art world's equivalent to blockbuster events, bringing two of the most norm-bending of women artists to the forefront of a major institution.

And then MoMA announced its upcoming roster of shows. Included is a Donald Judd retrospective set for 2017 and a Bruce Nauman retrospective planned for the following year. Besides these two headliners, there will also be "Picasso Sculpture," a survey of Lebanese artist Walid Raad's work, a retrospective of Uruguayan painter and sculptor Joaquín Torres-García's work, and a retrospective of Belgian multi-media artist Marcel Broodthaers' work. (On view now, if you're interested: a Gilbert & George show and a group exhibition featured around Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series.")

Sense a pattern here? For the foreseeable future, art fans venturing to NYC's palace of modern art will be ogling over male artists, and a lot of them. Of course, this isn't such a new trend -- a look back on the 2014 calendar looks pretty grim, gender parity-wise -- but after a summer of Björk and Yoko, it feels a little defeatist to just return to the way things were. 

This isn't to say you shouldn't be excited about Walid Raad or Jacob Lawrence or Joaquin Torres-Garcia, who, at the very least, don't fall into the DWEM (dead white European male) category. It's just ... it's hard to ignore the numbers, stats that consistently tell us that women artists are underrepresented in major museums and galleries. Critic Jerry Saltz brought up MoMA's "Women Problem" once, and then he did it again. But still, circumstances don't seem to be changing fast enough. Today, a better question for MoMA might be: where are all the women artists of color?

So to help speed up the progress train -- or, let's be honest, to simply shine yet another spotlight on the art world's inability to stop undercutting the potential of 50 percent of the planet's population, here's a list of deserving women artists, compiled by a few of the writers and editors of HuffPost Culture, MoMA should take heed to consider. 

Marisol Escobar

Venezuelan sculptor Marisol Escobar, 85, is known for her boxy wooden sculptures, at once eerie and adorable, flattened totem poles that combined Pop art sensibility with the raw impulses of folk art. Marisol’s sculptures, reminiscent of Egyptian tombs and toy soldiers, feature the faces of movie stars, families, political figures, and often, Marisol herself. The artist was a crucial player in the 1960s art scene, though her work slowly faded out of view over the next 50 years. However, recently, the enormous impact of Marisol’s work has been embraced. “Proudly independent, she did not fit into any of the era’s retrospectively sanctified movements,” Sebastian Smee explained in an article for the Boston Globe. “And yet she played a key role in shaping a cultural shift away from mid-century, atomic-age existentialism... toward the visual pizzazz, double-edged irony, and deadpan distillations of Pop.” -- Priscilla Frank

Kara Walker

Kara Walker, 45, has gained critical acclaim for her large-scale silhouettes, which set startling black images against white backgrounds, warping the Southern portrait tradition. Since then she’s translated this aesthetic to the diverse media of animations, shadow puppets and “magic lanterns.” Walker, it seems, can take any ephemeral art form and give it the sharp power of racial and social critique -- without ever losing artistic and technical skill. Her most recent work, "A Subtlety," or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, saw an enormous sphinx made of white sugar installed in the doomed Domino Sugary Factory, surrounded by molasses child figures. Like her previous work, it reshaped visitors’ relationship to old traditions, poking holes in our nostalgia, bringing to light the unsaid beneath our pure white sugar. (Can you imagine this inside MoMA?)

Walker never comforts nor reassures her viewers, so her retrospective would be a refreshing counterpoint to the consumer-friendly curation we’ve seen with MoMA pop culture icons. Watch out though: Sunday museum goers might actually have to think about race. -- Colton Valentine 

Ruth Asawa

The late Ruth Asawa, born in 1926, is probably best known for her wire sculptures, the bulbous, basket-like creations that she crocheted to perfection, a technique she learned in Mexico in the 1940s. San Franciscans might know her as the "fountain lady," due to the simple fact that she helped erect more than a few public fountains in the city over the course of her lifetime. Beyond these three-dimensional offerings, her works on paper feature ghostly black-and-white figures alongside Rorschach-like patterns dubbed "Desert Flower" and "Plane Trees."

But aside from her art, Asawa's biography is varied and complex. She was one of seven children born to Japanese parents who made their living as truck farmers in Southern California. She lived through the Great Depression, and she spent several months in an internment camp during World War II after her father was arrested by FBI agents. Eventually, she ended up at Black Mountain College, where she became a student of Josef Albers, Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller. Once she settled in San Francisco, her art flourished, but she continued working in public schools -- her first career ambition -- and advocating for public art until her death in 2013. This is the kind of woman I'd like to see in a career retrospetive. -- Katherine Brooks

Agnes Martin

The late Agnes Martin has been getting overdue recognition this year, with a big biography out with Thames & Hudson, and a retrospective at the Tate in London. Still, her subtle genius would benefit from an in-person celebration of her work in America -- the quiet hues of her abstract paintings translate clumsily into print. Many of her works have found a cozy home at Dia:Beacon where they’re housed aside Sol LeWitt’s repetitive, geometric wall sketches. Like LeWitt, Martin’s work is delicate and benefits from the juxtaposition provided by sturdy, unchanging museum walls. Unlike LeWitt, her paintings are fluid rather than rigid -- she pairs pastels inspired by the warm landscape in the American Southwest, where she produced some of her most remarkable work. Before that, she lived in Manhattan, making her steel-and-black toned abstract paintings a nice fit for a New York museum. Hours could be devoted to standing in front of her earth-toned canvases, getting lost in calm, meditative thoughts. -- Maddie Crum

Carol Rama

Carol Rama’s artworks, some of which date back to the 1940s, could scandalize contemporary audiences with her erotic watercolors. In one, a woman masturbates with a snake, in another, a woman looks back at the viewer and sticks out her tongue while taking a shit. In a third, she crouches crotch-length between two men, who each jiggle a deck of penises in her face. Rama’s early graphic works turned more abstract in the '50s and incorporated multimedia materials and hints of surrealism into the '60s and '70s. In the '80s and '90s, things got explicit once again. Through it all, Rama, 97, incorporated motifs both personal and punk: syringes, doll eyes, animal claws, bicycle tubes -- some images reminiscent of her father who committed suicide when Rama was a child. Above all, Rama created work to heal her own wounds, as well as those of others who’d undergone extreme suffering. She said of her work in an interview with Esso Gallery: “They will be liked greatly by those whom have suffered, and have not known how to save themselves from the suffering.” -- Priscilla Frank

Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu’s work is refreshingly corporeal: it makes the body central to the art and makes you feel the art in your body. She takes that human body and mashes it up with organic and inorganic forms, plant tendrils and machinery alike, all formed from collage materials. The visual effects are stunning, as are the theoretical implications. Mutu, 42, is often associated with Afrofuturism -- which envisions alternate sci-fi realities for the African diaspora. More recent works have delved into sculpture ("Suspended Playtime"), animation ("The End of Eating Everything"), and performance art, such as when she distributed chocolate mermaids at a London gallery opening as a commentary on consumption of brown bodies. In 2014, the Brooklyn Museum held a survey of Mutu’s work, and though she’s a Brooklyn resident, we’d love to see her work cross into Manhattan. -- Colton Valentine

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois, who died in 2010 at the age of 98, created mammoth spiders both sinister and maternal, suspended sculptures both firmly tethered and vulnerably floated, polished metal figures that seemed alien yet reflected your face in every one of their curves and angles. She was full of these contradictions, but seemed cemented in the messages she wanted to communicate. For me, I'm always attracted to the way she represented anxiety, a condition so many men before her had attached to the female body alone. I think of her "Arches of Hysteria," contorted bodies that showed the male image in the throws of disquietude. From fabric to bronze to marble, Bourgeois took on a dizzying array of media that just begs to fill the halls of MoMA. -- Katherine Brooks

Kiki Smith 

Kiki Smith, 61, is a German-born artist who seems ever at ease with confronting the human body, ailments, gender and race. Her ink and pencil characters appear to be plucked from the same universe, rendered as images that stretch and exaggerate the female (sometimes nude) body in ways both spiritual and fairy tale-esque. A previous survey of her work, "Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005," originated at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and traveled to the Whitney in New York City, the city she lives in today, and a short exhibition of her "Prints, Books & Things" went on view at MoMA in 2003. But why stop there? -- Katherine Brooks

Eva Hesse

“Don’t ask what it means or what it refers to,” the late Eva Hesse once said about her art. “Don’t ask what the work is. Rather, see what the work does.” The artist fled Nazi Germany at three years old with her family and relocated to New York; just seven years later her mother committed suicide. Hesse is known for her groundbreaking sculptures, toying with the tropes of minimalism, the dominant art movement of the time, but making room for a hint of slop and chaos. Using unconventional materials like wax, latex and cheesecloth, Hesse imbued her deceptively simple forms with a certain bodily quality, hinting at the sag of a breast, the wrinkle of skin, the coiling of intestines.

Because of her unorthodox materials, Hesse’s works are especially difficult to conserve, something the artist herself was aware of. “At this point I feel a little guilty when people want to buy it,” she told The Nation in 2006. “I think they know but I want to write them a letter and say it’s not going to last. I am not sure what my stand on lasting really is. Part of me feels that it’s superfluous, and if I need to use rubber that is more important. Life doesn’t last; art doesn’t last.” Hesse passed away from a brain tumor at only 34, but in her short lifetime, changed the trajectory of sculpture forever. -- Priscilla Frank

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann’s feminist performance pieces are jubilant celebrations of everything taboo -- from vaginas to body odor to uncooked chicken. The 75-year-old's most well-known work, 1974’s “Meat Joy,” features a jubilant orgy slash buffet, with unclothed participants rolling around in paint, uncooked chicken, sausage and fish, quite literally soaking in all of life’s juices. And then there’s “Interior Scroll,” in which Schneemann recited a monologue while pulling it out of her vagina, which also earned its place in the archives of feminist art. In more recent years, the artist’s work has taken a political turn, addressing issues from Palestine in the '80s to Sept. 11 with equally an incisive eye. Almost all contemporary feminist artists -- from Marina Abramovic to Petra Collins to Lady Gaga -- owe a nod to Schneemann’s fearlessness. She also basically invented the selfie. -- Priscilla Frank

Judy Chicago

Need we say more?

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Do you love Tom Cruise?

The way he runs with jacked intensity, that single wisp of un-gelled hair bobbing to and fro in the breeze? That foolhardy smile that says, "Sorry, boss, my way or the highway," with a combination of youthful naïvety and the cocksureness of a born winner? His compact, buff as hell little body that defies age and time? The way his movies are feverishly erected around him like cardboard boxes that, in his presence, morph into rocket ships? 

Well, if so, enjoy this naked sculpture of the man, the legend, the Cruise, courtesy of celeb-crazed artist Daniel Edwards.

The sculpture, a nude shroud of Cruise himself, serves as a tribute to the actor's 25th year with the Church of Scientology -- what could be his last. Sculptor Edwards and gallery Cory Allen Contemporary Art organized a "pop-up Church of Scientology" in honor of the anniversary, to be assembled near the authentic Church's Clearwater headquarters in Florida.

Taking a hint from the Shroud of Turin, the Shroud of Scientology is a 14-foot rectangular beast, depicting a fully groomed Cruise clutching the Scientology cross on his chest. 

"Radiocarbon dating will never rule out the Shroud of Scientology’s authenticity,"  Edwards explained in a statement. "It exists as a document of Tom Cruise’s faith in Scientology -- a photo negative of the radiance of his soul. It gives evidence for future generations that Tom Cruise not only belonged to Scientology, but saved it from obscurity."

Also on display is a Church of Scientology Silver Anniversary Medal for Tom Cruise. 

Edwards and Cory Allen are known for their controversial Hollywood-centric work -- Edwards, thanks to his sculptures of stars including North West and Justin Bieber, and, in 2006, a bronze sculpture of Suri Cruise’s “first bowel movement.” Cory Allen, on the other hand, had the laughably bad idea to put Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes on display as art.

Despite the artists' less-than-perfect track record, we can't deny our excitement at a Cruise-centric work, especially one in the buff. Flashback to P.T. Anderson's wise words on the set of "Magnolia": "Tom Cruise is the biggest movie star in the world. Are you kidding? Of course he’s got the world’s biggest cock."

The ‘Pop-up Church of Scientology’ featuring the “Shroud of Scientology” will open to the public at Cory Allen Contemporary Art’s The Showroom, located in the Warehouse Arts District in St. Petersburg, FL, on August 8, 2015. 

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To outsiders, Burning Man is a place of tutus, psychedelic drugs, pyrotechnics and general desert revelry. Nostalgic adults converge in and around Black Rock City every summer to, according to those of us who've never attended, burn effigies and practice some good ol' radical self-expression. Not exactly what you'd call a family-friendly environment, right?

Wrong, says photographer Zipporah Lomax. In a recently funded Kickstarter project, dubbed "Dusty Playground," she is highlighting the children and families who venture just beyond the California-Nevada border to take part in the week-long Burning Man festivities. Her photos capture the individuals -- young and old -- who gather for the ritual burning alongside sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and cousins.

The images, in particular, give voice to the "Burner parents" who believe the playa is the perfect place for their kids to let imaginations run wild. In Lomax's photos, girls and boys can be seen playing in the desert dust, admiring the massive artworks on display and lavishing the off-the-grid freedom Black Rock City provides.

"To my eye, the children have always been present, right along with the boisterous adults that populate Black Rock City," Lomax explained in an email. "There have always been these smaller versions of their adult counterparts, the Littlest Burners, having an awesome time alongside the rest of us ... It’s an endless unfolding of stimulating experiences, each as spectacular as the one before -- the kids are simply part of the magical fabric of it all."

Lomax's project isn't just about the children, though. "It’s about the depth of the culture they represent," she said. She is bothered by the narrow conception people have of Burning Man, "as it doesn't, in any way, account for the experience I’ve had of this event." She was quick to correct any characterization of the event as a "festival." Burning Man is a different kind of phenomenon, she says, describing the gathering as a center of participation and contribution, rather than consumption and entertainment. 

"It is a place that favors the gift over the transaction, encouraging us to ask what we might offer, rather than what we might gain." Altogether, the environment of Burning Man is much more complex, hardly just an opportunity to disconnect from some "default world" and party mindlessly for a week.

"It IS that for some people," she noted. "I sincerely have no problem with that. Indeed, it’s the very freedom to make it into whatever you want it to be that makes [Black Rock City] such a wonderful place. It’s expansive enough that we can each have our own experience, be that focusing on the vibrant sound camps, donning elaborate costumes and partying wildly, or ... more modestly taking it all in, focusing on art, relaxing in Center Camp and meeting people from all over the world."

This is what she hopes to convey with her book -- to speak to the quieter side of a multigenerational event, highlighting a lesser known element of Burning Man along the way.

And this lesser known element can be quite poetic. Lomax recounted a moment in 2014, on a Sunday morning at Burning Man's Temple of Grace just before the space was set to be burned, in accordance with tradition. Lomax recalled the "collective energy" of the day was somber and heavy. But then, a woman appeared in the temple with an infant and the space suddenly shifted "into something palpably more light-hearted." The tiny blonde infant, Lomax wrote in a blog post about the experience, was wrapped in orange silk, nestled in her mother's arms, "her deep blue eyes were calmly alert, taking it all in."

"This precious little being had such an impact on everyone lucky enough to be there that Sunday morning," Lomax added in the post. "Her pure presence lifted our collective spirit and helped us exhale and let go of all we’d come there to absolve."

Lomax hopes to continue photographing Burning Man, focusing her lens next on the elders of Black Rock City. At the end of the day, as an artist, Lomax photographs many other congregations and festivals, but holds a special place in her heart for the playa.

"I could tell you a million and one things about Burning Man and still, my descriptions would fall short as my explanations will only ever speak to my own experience," she concluded. "The truth, is that Burning Man is 1,000 different things to each of its 70,000 participants. It is beautiful and it is profane, it’s debaucherous and its sacred, it’s a wild, raucous party and it is a deeply spiritual gathering. If you’ve never been there -- it is everything you might imagine and it is nothing you can fathom."

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This man's version of an iconic "Lion King" song is so incredible, it'd even make Scar crack a smile. 

Musician Sam Robson arranged "The Circle of Life" and performed all the parts -- up to 50 different voices at one time -- by himself, according to the YouTube video's description. The music really gives us LYFE. 

Listen as Robson takes us back to Pride Rock with his stunning melodies. You can imagine Timon and Pumbaa just itching to chime in. 

We know what we're gonna sing in the shower tonight! 

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The inspired world of Harry Potter fandom has blessed us with a truly magical joke.

Author J.K. Rowling celebrated her 50th birthday on July 31, and good wishes poured in from her 5 million Twitter followers. Including this gem: 

In the series, Firenze is a centaur who lives in the Forbidden Forest on the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He teaches divinity at the school, saves Harry's life when Voldemort attacks him and fights in the Battle of Hogwarts. The centaur colony banishes him for helping humans.

In other words, he's a pretty good friend.

Rowling was amused by the joke.

Thank you, Rowling, for taking a break from shutting down misogynist bullies and slamming Serena Williams' critics to identify the Chosen Pun.

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Emoji never cease to fascinate. We often wonder if we can eventually communicate only in these tiny illustrations of pizza slices and lipsticks, and we puzzle over whether we've been interpreting some of the symbols wrong all along. Fred Benenson, a data engineer who is "passionate about emoji," tried to translate Moby Dick into emoji.

As far as linguistic projects go, emoji don't quite work -- they don't have all the components needed to make up a whole language. They are, however, conveying meaning in a form we should all be familiar with -- visual art. As art, these little emoji hardly offer the most avant-garde thought or impressive style, but they have made it easy for us to exchange emotions and information in a visual form that can be both more immediate and more malleable of meaning. 

In "Digital Mirrors," a new exhibit opening Friday at Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia, the emoji as art takes center stage. The slew of think pieces about emoji language, director Patrick Shillenn told HuffPost via email, actually inspired the multi-artist show. The ability emoji offer to communicate emotions across languages, he explained, seemed like a natural juxtaposition with "the crucial role that art has maintained throughout history in tapping into our universal feelings and the human condition."

 The artists in the show each focused on a particular emoji, some easily recognizable from the final work and others dramatically built upon and reimagined, all placed into such a new context -- gone are the small white boxes of our text messages -- that we're forced to reckon with the true image and the complex meaning behind each. 

"Digital Mirrors" will be opening Friday, Aug. 7, at 6 p.m. at Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia, through Aug. 30. You can also view the exhibit online.

All images courtesy of Arch Enemy Arts.

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Inside the Iron Man suit, Tony Stark is but a man. Sure, he's a man with billions of dollars and a bunch or really cool toys, but he's still a man. Take away the suit's powers, and he's forced to confront the mundane. 

That's what L.A. photographer and designer Raffael Dickreuter was trying to capture with his photo series, "Iron Man Grounded." 

"It was important to me to put him more in just common everyday situations many people could relate to," Dickreuter told The Huffington Post in an email Friday. "He can't fly, he is stuck in economy class like the rest of us." 

Dickreuter created the project after Robert Downey Jr. turned down his request for a photo when Dickreuter ran into him earlier this year.  

"It was a true Tony Stark moment but in real life," Dickreuter wrote on his website. "But that was also the moment it dawned on me that Iron Man and Robert [Downey Jr.] were maybe so high up at this point, they no longer had to care about the common man."

The encounter inspired him to make a project placing a powerless Iron Man in mundane, sometimes frustrating everyday situations. Dickreuter says he has no hard feelings toward the actor -- who obviously is busy saving the world.

Robert Downey Jr. shared one of the photos on Facebook.

Fans of the comic book and Marvel film franchises will note that in Dickreuter's art, the arc reactor that keeps Iron Man ticking is turned off.

The story goes that the experimental engine that powered the suit also kept Tony Stark alive by keeping shrapnel shards from piercing his heart. Although Stark had the shrapnel removed at the end of the movie "Iron Man 3," it's interesting to think about Iron Man living his life with a "broken" heart.

Dickreuter said the busted arc reactor is part of his work's "subtle message," which makes light of "our current obsession with superheroes who can do anything they want and are totally disconnected from the real struggles of society."

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When Brooklyn rapper Zebra Katz takes to a stage, it’s impossible to turn away from his piercing gaze.

Such was the case last Sunday when Zebra Katz played an early afternoon set at Chicago’s Lollapalooza. With massive trees protecting the area from the blistering August sun, he stalked, pounced and growled his way through songs ranging from his scathing new EP, “Nu Renegade,” to his better-known tracks, particularly the forever-fresh “Ima Read.”

All the while, the crowd gathered around the stage continued to grow in size to the point where Zebra Katz, clad in an all-white ensemble, ended his set off-stage, rapping while surrounded by his fans. The fourth wall had definitely been broken, and yet, the spell he held his audience under had not.

Three days earlier, Ojay Morgan, the man behind the “character” of Zebra Katz, sat in the basement of Berlin, where he was headlining the Chicago nightclub’s annual pre-Lollapalooza “side show.”

While he spoke with the same wit and conviction familiar to anyone who’s ever taken in a Zebra Katz performance, Morgan clearly occupies a different space in the world than Zebra Katz, which makes it difficult to put a finger on what Morgan is all about -- and this appears intentional. 

“Zebra Katz has a bigger bank account than I have, that’s the difference,” Morgan told The Huffington Post. “It’s really good to have a veil. Like Andy Warhol said, you should always have something to sell and I’m not selling myself, I’m selling a product. I’m selling a brand, selling a lifestyle and it’s not myself. That’s the comfort I have.”

The Zebra Katz "brand," which grew out of a performance piece Morgan first presented while a student at Eugene Lane College, hit the indie mainstream in 2012 with the release of “Ima Read,” a song that attracted the attention of the music and fashion world elite.

Since then, Zebra Katz has remained prolific, releasing a steady stream of mixtapes and videos while traveling around the world performing live sets that are just as intense, if not more so, than the material they are drawn from. Over the past year, he’s played shows in Spain, Switzerland, Germany and Japan. Last week, while spending time in Jamaica with his family -- his parents are Jamaican -- he was stung by a jellyfish. 

But throughout that time, Morgan has still yet to release a full-length album as Zebra Katz and has also expressed frustration with how his music has often been lumped in with that of artists like Le1f, Mykki Blanco and Cakes da Killa as a sort of New York-born queer rap "revolution." 

“I’m completely against the genre-ization of [a 'queer rap scene'] because it’s really fucked up,” Morgan, who identifies as queer, said. “I think as artists we have so much more to offer than a blanket sexuality that most people think is helping us sell music because it’s not. For some, it may, but it’s not in my music and not in my aesthetic.”

Instead of pursuing a more traditional path through the music industry, Morgan has taken an almost completely independent route, releasing his own music and doing his own publicity -- he may have been the only artist playing Lollapalooza who listed himself as his own media liaison.

But all that’s not to say Morgan doesn’t play well with others. For his “Nu Renegade” EP, released in May, he worked with London-based Iran-born producer Leila Arab, a frequent Björk collaborator Morgan met at a show of his. The result is a collection of six songs that are dark and sexy, sparse yet overwhelming and occasionally challenging to listen to. All of the songs, too, have accompanying videos which are being released once-a-month up until the final three, which will comprise a mini-film of their own.

The latest, the video for the EP-opening “Blk Diamond,” is as disturbing as it is explosive. The track itself brings together elements of rap, trip-hop, electronic and industrial music, like a mix of Grace Jones, the Haxan Cloak and Tricky at their strangest.

“We think it isn’t one of the ‘nicest’ EPs to come out this year,” Morgan admitted of "Nu Renegade." “It’s really brutal and I think that’s kind of just the reflection of our time and a reflection of what’s happening. No matter what realm or fragment of society is fucked up, it glimpses and touches on that.”

Twenty minutes into the interview, Morgan pulls back the curtain on his approach to his music and videos ever so slightly, explaining that the videos draw inspiration from horror films like “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Shining” and “Candyman" and that he relishes playing a villain-type character through his music.

And though his visuals and lyrics might sometimes feel esoteric, Morgan insists there is a message to be taken away from the work, even if it’s not entirely spelled out.

“If people say it’s dark, it’s dark because people are only looking through the peephole of the world I’m creating. I haven’t let everyone in the door,” Morgan said. “But I’m talking about real-life shit. I’m talking about race. I’m talking about my black body, my body, how it means for me to have this body and how I want other people to experience it or experience me. That’s why I’m putting out so much work and all these visuals because it’s content, and with more content you have more context for what the hell I’m talking about.”

With festival season winding down, Morgan has his sights on completing his first full-length album for next year, in addition to bulking up his label, ZFK Records, to help artists with a similar point-of-view as Morgan gain exposure. He’s also looking forward to playing more live shows, with a European tour slated for the fall.

In the meantime, he won't be turning to the Internet for input on his next move.

“I used to Google ‘Zebra Katz,’ but I don’t anymore because I don’t really care for peoples’ opinions that much,” Morgan said. “If I would have listened to everything people told me to do, I definitely wouldn’t be here.”

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Just because you're dead and buried doesn't mean your severed head can't go on an amazing, 300-year journey -- and talk about it. 

Oliver Cromwell's notorious noggin speaks in Marc Hartzman's new book, The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell: A Memoir.

For those of you who slept through history class, Cromwell led an uprising against the British monarchy that resulted in the beheading of King Charles I. He served as lord protector of England until his death in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Naturally, a few years later, when King Charles II restored the royal family to power, it was payback time.

Cromwell was dug up and posthumously beheaded. His defiled head hung from a Westminster Hall post for 20 years. And that's when his skull-twisting, three-century journey began.

Maybe Cromwell's head didn't grant Hartzman an exclusive, but this fictionalized account recounts one of history's strangest tales in a way you'll never forget.

Hartzman joins us for this week's HuffPost Weird News Podcast, to talk about his new book, his career as a sideshow scribe, and the fantastic story of how he helped a bearded lady reunite with her bearded son after decades of separation.

Hartzman is a longtime blogger for HuffPost Weird News, and we're proud to publish an excerpt from his book:

THE EMBALMED HEAD OF OLIVER CROMWELL (An Excerpt)

Victory swept through the cold, grey air that 30^th of January in the year of Our Lord 1649, when, upon the scaffolding, my greatest military and political efforts at last proved triumphant. The trial at Westminster Hall resulted in grand success and the High Court of Justice made its unprecedented decision, sentencing King Charles I to be the last the Commonwealth would know of his tyrannical kind.

The judgment announced: “He, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the good of this nation, shall be put to death by severing of his head from his body.”

On that most delightful morning of the execution, Charles enjoyed one final walk in St. James Park through the naked trees and along the lake with his faithful dog. One last moment of companionship; one last moment to bask in the glory of the land he ruled.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, the festivities commenced. An escort led the king through the Banqueting House at the Palace of Whitehall, out a window, and onto a scaffold built on the street, draped in black cloth. There, amongst the crowd of joyous Parliamentarians and dismayed royalists, the masked executioner stood over the powerless tyrant. Charles dressed warmly in thick robes over his waistcoat to avoid shivering, fearing that witnesses might see him as the weak man he truly was. He wore heels to elevate his short stature, though this deceived no one. As he awaited his fate, the realisation grew clear that Providence would not save him, for He had granted no such divine rights to the throne after all. God’s will, in fact, appeared quite the contrary.

“Is my hair well?” he asked the executioner. Vanity prevailed even in his final moments. Assured his appearance was in order, including his neatly tapered Van Dyck, the pious king looked upward and uttered a prayer imperceptible to anyone but himself and the Lord above and then said these last words, for only the closest gathered to hear:

"I have delivered to my conscience; I p-p-pray God you do take those courses that are best for the g-g-good of the kingdom and your own salvation. I shall go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no d-d-disturbance can be."

I appreciated the brevity of his words, for it spared us his awful stammer and the moment of glory would be prolonged no further. Charles informed the axe man that he would stretch his arms forward when he was ready, and implored him to make the deed quick. With tension mounting amongst those gathered in the street, he at last stooped to the scaffold and laid down upon the block, his neck without defence, and gave the signal. The executioner slowly raised the axe as the hushed crowd looked on in disbelief, awaiting a moment unparalleled in history. Seconds later the blade fell swiftly and, with one clean blow, severed both the head and the English monarchy. Blood splattered like a fountain of treason. The executioner held the pate up high and exclaimed, “Behold the head of a traitor!”

Acclamations of the soldiery mixed with the collective groans and sobs of the royalists, all of which echoed harmoniously through London. Those who still believed in the power of the king stepped up to the scaffold and, for a fee, dipped handkerchiefs in his blood to be wiped upon wounds. This, they foolishly alleged, would serve as a cure to their ailments. At the very least, it would be a fine souvenir.

After these events, I assumed control of the Rump Parliament and within a short time became the first Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Never, though, did I expect to meet a similar fate just a few short years later. Nor did I expect that my own head, severed posthumously, would experience a new life and journey through the land for the next three centuries. (Read More)

SIDE NOTE: If you're in New York City on Aug. 17, bring your severed head over to the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn and check out Hartzman's book launch. This guy's a legend. And one more shout-out, to Stephie Coplan, who wrote and performed the theme song to the new book, "Hey Oliver Cromwell!"

See? Here at HuffPost Weird News, we're bringing people together, and bringing you all the stories that matter. But we couldn't do it without our beloved producer, Katelyn Bogucki, editor Jorge Corona and sound engineer Brad Shannon. We can't continue to do it without your support, so please stay tuned and give us a review, people!

CORRECTION: An earlier iteration of this piece stated that Cromwell died in 1691.

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In the Al Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza, residents have transformed a conflict-stricken area into a vibrant work of art.

Formerly bare doors and windows are now covered in rainbow shades of paint, and pastel-colored flower pots hang down alleyways. There are swirling murals on light purple and yellow walls, and brightly colored bricks line the sidewalks.

The neighborhood's aesthetic stands at odds with its devastated surroundings. Gaza is still recovering from last summer's 50 days of war between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants in the territory. This conflict came on the heels of another flare up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict just two years prior.

 The effort in Al Zaytoun to beautify the neighborhood was the brainchild of 58-year-old resident Mohammed Al Saedi, who wanted to create a positive atmosphere. He began painting pots in his own home, but had bigger ambitions. 

 "I wanted this idea to spread beyond my house," Al Saedi told reporter Jehad Saftawi in a video for the U.S.-based nonprofit Institute for Middle East Understanding, which provides information to journalists on Palestinian issues.

"I wanted to create a serene atmosphere full of flowers and colors in an attempt to heal the suffering and psychological effects of the siege," Al Saedi said.

His initiative was aided by local residents and the Tamer Institute for Community Education, a Palestinian nonprofit that contributed painting supplies and some artists to help with the project.

In the video, residents tout the colorful neighborhood as a grand success.

"We felt very happy when they painted the neighborhood," says 10-year-old Maram Haddad. "It's become very beautiful."

Over 2,100 Palestinians and 70 Israelis died in the 2014 conflict and around 100,000 Gaza homes were destroyed or damaged. Corruption and lack of access to building materials blocked rebuilding efforts. 

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Immature, embarrassing, fundamentally uncritical. Too often, the way we talk and write about Young Adult books is conflated with the way we talk about young adults, as though it’s teens doing the writing, unarmed with critical distance.

In fact, it’s almost always super-smart, bookish adults funneling all they’ve learned from reading into an honest story about kids. It’s no wonder adults enjoy their books. And this supposed trend is nothing new -- in 1939 Marjorie Rawlings won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for a novel that was meant to appeal to younger readers. 

In Rawling’s obituary in 2000, The New York Times reported:

The Yearling, Mrs. Rawlings' greatest triumph, was hailed in 1938 as a "classic" of American popular fiction. While considering her writing as lacking the depth and "tough-mindedness" of great literature, critics nevertheless praised her skill in reproducing the color, characters, speech, local customs and way of life of the backwoods of Florida.

So, critics might've dismissed her books' lack of heft, but they couldn't deny that she could tell a mean story.

The Yearling, for those who haven’t read it, is about a young boy who adopts a fawn, and takes the animal in as a member of the family. It’s not an unheard of set-up, but Rawling’s ability to write deftly about nature earned her accolades. Raised on a farm, she set the book in the spot that would eventually become her home -- a woody, mostly vacant spot called the “Big Scrub.”

Though Rawlings headed to New York City after graduating college, she eventually moved with her husband to a plot of land in rural Florida. And that's where her writing flourished. She would eventually befriend other Southern writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, but not before she captured the mood of her home in the story of The Yearling. In addition to winning arguably the top prize in fiction, it was a bestseller, read in book clubs nationwide, and was adapted into a major film. 

Today marks the 119th anniversary of Rawling's birth. Why not read a YA book to celebrate?

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Any behemoth industry has its lazy side. In Bollywood, this has to be the "party song," a seemingly requisite scene in a certain kind of blockbuster, governed by a crude formula that audiences still, somehow, go wild for.  

There's so much to satirize about the genre, from the requisite objectification of women (water must always meet clothing) to the reliable co-opting of black culture -- with an always sub par rap interlude, à la Rebecca Black's "Friday," that belies the culture's prejudices (against dark skin, and African-origin people, subservient in the insidious hierarchy that still lingers from colonial times).

Thankfully, India finally has satirists up to the task. In the long but worth it video above, the popular sketch comedy troupe All India Bakchod teams up with scene-stealer Irfan Khan  -- you know his scene thefts from "Namesake," "Life Of Pi," and "Jurassic Park" -- for a parody that perfectly skewers Bollywood's particular hypocrisies.

Based on "Party All Night," a hit song from 2013, the satiric version calls out everything from censor boards (Bottles! Girls! Because this is a song, censors will let it go!) to cynical producers who know the music-leading structure of the industry means they can make a hefty salary off a movie with a single catchy song and little else of note. Even for those unfamiliar with Bollywood, the tropes should feel relevant, given that every American party anthem music video engages in parallel ones.

As a side benefit, it's fun to see Khan -- a hidden gem in Bollywood's thicket of Ken-doll clones -- playing diva, in the leisurely intro. "I don't want to brag about myself, but I ... can ... do ... anything."

Respectfully requesting a parody of Indian cable news next.

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Dear, sweet J.K. Rowling would never want to make a horcrux, of course.

The deed -- if you remember from the Harry Potter book series -- is accomplished through murder, which splits a wizard's soul apart, allowing him to conceal a portion of it in an object of his choosing. Lord Voldemort, being a horrible git, created seven of them to achieve immortality. 

So, yes, Rowling would never want to make a horcrux. But if she did, we learned via Twitter on Friday, it'd probably be a tea bag.

Aww, Joanne. The author revealed her choice on the social media platform in a discussion with fans on tea-brewing. For the uncultured heathens non-Brits out there: Heat the kettle, not the mug. Add one tea bag per person, and one for the pot. Milk goes in last.

And never underestimate Rowling's Twitter presence -- she's notoriously good at responding to fans. Especially if you've got a good pun.

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The world is certainly changing for queer people.

From more and more people being able to live as their authentic selves to ensuring rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community via legislation, the last few years have seen especially overwhelming progress in terms of the growing cultural awareness surrounding this community.

A new photography book from Bernd Ott and Emily Besa aims to capture this reality through photos and stories of over 36 individuals who identify at different points along the spectrum of gender identity. Called All The People, the book features individuals from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and the United States who all uniquely transcend traditional notions of gender.

"We hope that some will see that your identity is not defined by socially introduced categorizations," Ott told The Huffington Post. "Once we can see categories as being arbitrary and meaningless, some may realize that we all share very similar fears and emotions and the same worries and feelings determine our existence. We actually share the same human experience despite what we look like, who we love, or how we love."

Check out photos from All The People below, as well as an interview with Ott and Besa. All The People is also engaged in a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund its publication -- head here for more information.

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What would you do if you could do anything?

Would you be a rockstar, playing a sold out arena? Or be a surfer, riding the gnarliest 100-foot swells this side of Hawaii?

No seriously, stop for a second and picture it.

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"Take several breaths, very slowly. In, and out. If you're laying down, get in touch with the surface you're laying on. Feel the support of your body. It's completely supported. It's not going to fall."

So begins a random YouTube video entitled "10 Minute Guided Meditation to ease Anxiety, Worry, and Urgency | Soothing | instant Calm | POWERFUL" uploaded by Positive Magazine Meditation Relaxation Inspiration. I found it as a result of a Google Video search using the key word "meditation."

Just envision the screen-saver-like stream of placid images flowing across your computer -- blue skies, opened hands, buddha statues and beach sunsets. Imagine the soothing female voice pronouncing these words ever so gently. The vague yet recognizable speaker, the voice of disembodied wellness, stands out like an invisible authority guiding us 21st century plebeians into a state of higher consciousness, inner peace, savasana, balance, mindfulness -- you get the drift.

But who is this almighty sovereign of mind and body wholeness? And why do we trust her so?

The Institute for New Feeling, IfNf, comprised of artists Scott Andrew, Agnes Bolt, and Nina Sarnelle, uses meditation videos like this as a jumping off point for their own work. Together, they present a playful alternative to the mainstream (often capitalist-driven) paths to wellness, manifested in audiovisual meditations, treatments, therapies, retreats and trendy products that at once challenge and embrace the wellness model. 

"At the Institute for New Feeling we advocate for the agency of regular people in conversation with the authoritative voices of' 'wellness,'" the artists of IfNf explained to The Huffington Post in an email. The three requested to respond collectively. "The Institute is the inventor of its own authority, borrowing from the language of corporate branding and new age healing, as well as that of mainstream medicine, therapy, health and beauty. If we can invent our own treatments, maybe you can too."

The IfNf offers a wide array of opportunities for enrichment, including edible ear plugs made from Japanese mochi, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation services via cell phone, and optimized meditations like this, erm, calming remix of the "You May Like" feature online (which, admittedly, appears on this site).

If you can't already tell, the remedies and treatments of IfNf are often absurd and purposefully non-functional. Despite the light-heartedness, though, they aim to achieve the overarching mission of the institute at large: "the development of new ways of feeling, and ways of feeling new." 

Andrew, Bolt and Sarnelle met in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pa. After graduation, they created the Institute in 2009 as an umbrella for their various artistic interests and pursuits. "We'd been making time-based experiences that were often very intimate, physical, or even metaphysical in nature," the artists explained. "With the formation of the Institute, we started framing these as treatments and therapies. In this way, IfNf began to question cultural conventions of what is believed to be 'good for us' (physically, socially, psychologically, spiritually…) at a given place and time. I mean, in medieval Europe, nine out of 10 doctors prescribed bloodletting. Do you remember when we all ate margarine?"

The three artists, who have rarely lived in the same city since graduate school, collaborate on everything. Google hangout comes in handy, sometimes for up to 10 hours a day. "Sometimes we’re actively discussing something, other times we’re just working 'beside' each other, sometimes we’re making lunch or using the bathroom. This virtualization has started to seep into our work in significant ways," they explained. "It’s a slow way of working but we think it’s vital to our relationship and ultimately makes the work better -- more intentional, critical -- it makes us aware of our self-aware of ourself aware of our..." We couldn't possibly estimate how many "posts" would precede the "modernity" of the Institute's mentality. 

The founding members of the institute brought to the project a sweeping variety of prior experiences under the auspices of "wellness," experiences radically different and yet, maybe not. One booked motivational speakers for company conventions in places like Cancun and Las Vegas, while another conducted historical research of fringe spiritualities and cults. One participated in medical research studies while another worked with more new-age alternatives, including sweat lodge ceremonies, sound baths, sensory deprivation tanks, reflexology, tarot, zen meditation and yoga.

"We are as interested in the power of placebo as we are in any of these things," they added. "For IfNf, the question is not what we believe in, but what are we capable of believing; not simply which treatments 'work,' but how they work, and why. We are skeptics, believers, amateurs, charlatans -- whatever you prefer."

The Institute offers all sorts of Institute-y options, whether you're looking for supernatural guidance or a neck pillow. Some of the virtual options are available fo your viewing pleasure on the website, assembled like an ambiguously therapeutic platform that almost reads like beautiful spam. As of now, the meat of the Institute exists as a traveling performance series, though there's a longterm plan of opening a permanent spa.

This summer, IfNf offered a participatory experience called "seek," a 15-minute private session in which the Internet plays the role of telepathic oracle, and Google tells your future. The participant is led through a calculated misuse of various Google search tools, during which a questioner asks questions like, "Do you have any nicknames?" or "Do you readily help people while asking for nothing in return?" The answers, which, to the unassuming search engine read like nonsense, are fed through Google search and Google Translate, many times. The questioner also runs scanned photos of the participant's face and butt through Google Image search. The results are all combined into a video template to create a virtual prophecy, what AnimalNY's Liam Matthews likened to an "extra-surreal Mad Lib."

 The project explored technology's ability, in the artists' words, "to create a scientific path to things that feel supernaturally unattainable right now. As Shazam taught us in 2009, 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' [as Arthur C. Clark said.]"

While "seek" feels like a techno-psychic experience you'd find at an experimental art fair or new age market -- somewhere between James Turrell's "Perceptual Cell" and Christina Lonsdale's aura photography --  the Institute's line of wellness products seem more like the kind of extraneous goods you'd peruse for laughs in SkyMall or Brookstone, only five times more absurd. 

One such object is an air-freshener that releases Oxytocin, a hormone related to human bonding and well-being. Another, a neck pillow made from cement, is at once heavy, smooth and cool to the touch. 

IfNf has four new product prototypes underway, which have been exhibited at various art venues, but the artists are still figuring out how to sell them. "We’re interested in the problem of categorizing and pricing -- whether to frame them as products or as sculptural art objects. The product line may sell for different prices in different contexts, whether you purchase online, in a boutique, or in a gallery. We’d like to engage this discussion of value in relation to context, especially as it involves peripheral concerns like the artists’ reputation, collectability, editions, archival stability, etc."

IfNf has a chameleon-like ability to become art, or not, depending on its surrounding habitat. Gazing upon their mochi-made earplugs gives you that same lightheaded uncertainty as encountering a crumpled Doritos bag on the floor of Art Basel. Is it art? Who decides?

For the artists behind IfNf, the goal is to operate both inside the art world and beyond it, with both opportunities enabling distinct yet constructive results. "We are interested in occupying a space inside both the 'art' world and the 'regular' world. By identifying ourselves as artists, viewers are able to approach our projects conceptually, recognizing how they reflect upon, criticize or playfully re-imagine existing realities. By identifying ourselves as a wellness institution, participants are able to approach our projects with a complexity of feeling that is not inhibited by the skepticism of the contemporary art context."

Engaging with the Institute in an art context enables participants to seriously evaluate the langue employed in spheres of wellness, as well as what's at stake. But the flip side is, just as wellness participants can perhaps be too accepting and impressionable, art audiences can be completely closed off.

"Art audiences in this stage of post-post-modernity are extremely cynical; it is increasingly difficult for artwork to generate any kind of emotional, spiritual or personal response," the artists said. "The Institute for New Feeling uses humor and/or criticality as a gateway to bring people into an experience, and then works to transform their expectations through time, physicality or intimacy. For instance, people may attend our team-building retreat session expecting a parody of similar programs, but after 90-minutes of eye contact exercises, empathy work and laying on the floor together, most emerge with a real sensation of openness and connectivity."

In this way, IfNf exists in a complex in between, subverting the language of corporate culture's wellness initiatives to both question the dominant structure and, more radically, feel something real. Specifically, the artists hope to evoke a "new feeling" in their viewers, a feeling the artists describe as "this contemporary state of integrating multiple feelings -- our growing tolerance, as a culture, for the unresolved, inexplicable or contradictory."

There's a difference between ironic appreciation and what IfNf is after, though. In interviews, they've compared their work to New Sincerity. "We’d like to propose an approach that’s neither a critique nor earnest acceptance of the corporate/institutional values being sold to us: insofar as we are giving over to the these powers, we are also molding a new value system alongside them."

Up to this point, IfNf has primarily exhibited in art world settings, although they try to utilize public space outside or on the cusp of an artistic context whenever possible. Eventually, the artists hope to open up a storefront spa in Los Angeles, distancing themselves significantly from a strictly artistic frame of reference.  

 The artists have been discussing the logistics behind such a vision for around five years, hammering out exactly how to run a successful, sustainable, artist-run space. "This shit is difficult, financially risky, hard to sustain, and has the potential to usurp all of our time into managing -- rather than making -- art." However, the obstacles reveal new tactics, such as partnering with an existing spa and offering alternative treatments during off-hours, or setting up a space in an airport kiosk or shopping mall. 

The various limitations involved in actualizing a physical space sparked the artists' interest in establishing virtual presence. "We started thinking about developing the Institute’s virtual space alongside its physical manifestation. Maybe we should create a video tour of our spa before the spa even exists? Maybe we should answer phone calls as if we’re sitting behind a desk in uniform? Or perhaps the space already exists and you simply can’t get there? During this time, we became much more interested in the slippery state of the 'institution' -- as a physical space, but also as a brand, a collective, a community, a rumor."

The artists initiated a more manageable prototype of this model with the Felt Book, a yearlong research project resulting in a collection of  home remedies, treatments and Fluxus-like instructionals from over 70 invited artists.

One such piece was Luke Loeffler’s “Treatment for Hyperactive Electronic Response Syndrome,” a message-based response system designed to help viewers resist the urge to constantly check and recheck your cell phone. You text a number (505-672-5561), turn your phone to vibrate, and your phone will start receiving false vibration notifications via the therapy, thus strengthening your resistance in looking. This July, the Felt Book toured to 12 cities across the country; along with the exhibition and a video screening, viewers received printed text pieces to take home with them.

Until the Institute takes a more permanent, physical shape, acquaint yourself with their simulated presence, which, given their work's technological bent, works quite fittingly. Peruse the online Institute and melt into their pastel-tinted videos -- part meditation guides, part infomercials, calming yet invigorating, like a corporate sponsored, lavender-scented bubble bath, with musical accompaniment by Enya.

Take several breaths, very slowly. In, and out. Ease into the feeling of newness, a complex embodiment of seriousness and play, art and capital, technology and nature, critique and embrace. Can you feel the paradox? The harmony? Breathe in, breathe out. The Institute for New Feeling is here. 

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