The ObserverArtInterviewMeet the woman who turns artificial limbs into works of art
Andrew AnthonyFrom arms that resemble snakes to legs studded with diamonds, Sophie de Oliveira Barata designs bespoke prosthetics. Andrew Anthony meets her in her London workshopSophie de Oliveira Barata's work in pictures – gallery
Sophie de Oliveira Barata's studio is located in an undistinguished building near Harlesden in north London, but inside it looks like a workshop from the futuristic classic Blade Runner, only with good lighting. Spread around its artistically white space is a plethora of extraordinary artificial limbs.
Some of them are uncannily lifelike, such near perfect simulacra of the human leg that you wonder how they came to be separated from their owners. Others, however, are outlandishly robotic, a metallic riot of hardware decorated with everything from rhinestones to laser lights.
In the corner is what looks like a pasta-making machine. As if rolling out ultra-thin layers of lasagna, De Oliveira Barata tears about foot-square translucent strips of silicon and applies them to a cast. "These are the beginning stages," she explains. "I'm just piecing together the different skin tones. Then I will vacuum to take out the air bubbles and then start sculpting. When I'm finished, I'll put it in the oven and peel it off."
This is the conventional means of making bespoke artificial limbs, a careful, time-consuming process that takes around three weeks. De Oliveira Barata has been making realistic prosthetics for the past decade but two years ago she started the Alternative Limb Project, which caters for clients who are looking for less realism and a good deal more fantasy.
She had the idea after one of her regular clients, a young girl called Pollyanna, began requesting a few frills. "I'd been making her leg every year because she was growing," De Oliveira Barata recalls, "and every year she wanted something different. It started off with little Peppa Pigs at the top of her leg, and they were all eating ice-cream. And the next year she wanted a whole Christmas scene at the top of her leg. She was getting bored coming in every year; it was a chore for her but when she had something to look forward to, it completely changed her experience. And her friends and family were asking her what she was going to have. And it became quite an exciting event for her, so I could see the rehabilitation effect in that way."
Because De Oliveira Barata had an artistic background – she studied special-effects prosthetics for film at the University of the Arts London – she found herself wondering what sort of limb she would want. She thought of the cartoon character Inspector Gadget and decided to look for amputees "who might want something different".
She Googled "amputee model" and found Viktoria Modesta, who ended up wearing one of De Oliveira Barata's legs at the London 2012 Paralympic closing ceremony. It's a striking piece, at once powerful and delicate, full of rhinestones, shards of mirrored plastic and studded with Swarovski diamonds – sort of country and western goes sci-fi at a society ball.
There have been two big influences on the profile and self-image of amputees in recent years. One is the Paralympics, which De Oliveira Barata agrees has transformed the public perception of people who've lost their limbs and given the amputees themselves much greater confidence about expressing their condition in positive ways – as something that is not defined by absence but, rather, transformation.
The other big change has been wrought by the number of military amputees produced by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "They're quite proud of their limbs," says De Oliveira Barata. "They tend to have a different mode of thinking in general, perhaps because they've been prepped up about what might happen. They're quite impressive. They have this attitude as if it's almost a badge of honour and I think that has a knock-on effect. The metal work and the componentry is becoming more and more slick and robotic, and they love all that."
One leg she did for the soldier Ryan Seary is a stunning mixture of the realistic and the robotic. He wanted his toes back, says De Oliveira Barata, so she created a lifelike foot, complete with micro toe hairs from the back of Seary's neck. But emerging from the centre of the foot is a part-metallic, part-bone cyborg structure that its owner describes as "awesome".
The limbs cost between £3,000 and £8,000 a piece, depending on how much work is involved. Some take up to three months to complete. There are companies in the US that offer basic limb shells that can be customised, but Sophie prefers to keep her business to a small scale – a tailor of artificial limbs, instead of a producer of off-the-peg legs. "I'm more interested in pushing your imagination to the limits," she says.
Yet she still likes making realistic limbs, and feels that many amputees would prefer to be able to swap between different types of limbs, depending on the occasion. "The truth is people say they want a realistic leg but as soon as you give them a few chances to make improvements, they ask you to ease down on the veins and take the bunion off."
But with the mechanics of intelligent artificial limbs costing up to £50,000 a piece, it's perhaps not surprising that amputees have started to think about exactly how they want to display and encase the hardware. Some of De Oliveira Barata's clients put an enormous amount of thought into every detail. Which she appreciates.
Warm and creative, she seems to combine an artistic sensibility with innate people skills. And one of the aspects she most enjoys about her job is meeting her clients.
"You get to form a relationship," she says. "I met this one guy recently and I thought he was joking. He said: 'I know exactly what I want. I want a leg shell that's the shape of my leg with cut-outs so that you can see through and you can see the componentry inside but it would be covered by what looks like a bone. Then there would be an alien around it and a predator and they would be having a war inside my leg.' And I was like, Really?"
She's now busy making it.
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