Sweet Miniature Memories Live Inside Colorful Resin Lollipops

Artist Preserves Sweet Memories in Colorful Resin Lollipops

By Emma Taggart on October 10, 2024

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Resin is a remarkably versatile medium, allowing artists to bring their most imaginative ideas to life. South Korean artist Iurum uses the material to encase tiny figurines within translucent lollipops. Her series, Life in Icecream, captures charming moments suspended in sweetness, offering a playful yet thoughtful exploration of memories.

Crafted from vibrant gradients of glossy resin, each sculptural piece looks just like an edible treat on a stick. Iurum even adds a bite mark to each lollipop, making them look all the more realistic and enticing. Each piece includes a miniature scene within its see-through form, revealing sweet memories of childhood and more. In one piece, a little girl plays with a lamb, and in another, two figures appear to ride bicycles.

Iurum’s resin sculptures may be sweet, but they also carry a sense of melancholy. “Ice cream is a gustatory object that evokes a sweet euphoria, conjuring up images of safe and comfortable notions,” says the artist on Instagram. “On the other hand, the miniatures in the ice cream are memory images of fragile human beings with finite lives.”

Through her Life in Icecream series, Iurum hopes viewers will experience two images at once—transforming the memory of a fragile, uncertain life into something safe and sweet, like ice cream. The artist calls this shift “SWEETCH” (a combination of “sweet” and “switch”). It represents the idea of placing life’s memories into a sweet, comforting context, allowing them to be remembered with happiness.

Take a look at some of Iurum's resin sculptures below, and explore more by following Iurum on Instagram. If you're in Taipei, you can experience the Life in Icecream series in person at ART TAIPEI from October 25–28, 2024.