Butting In: Portrait Made of Over 20K Used Cigarette Butts

serge-gainsbourg-portrait

Cigarette butts litter the streets of most cities and towns, creating an environmental burden that could easily be avoided. Swiss street artist Jinks Kunst has come up with a great way to use these omnipresent pieces of rubbish to immortalize one of the most influential popular music artists in the world.

cigarette-butt-art

(image via: Oddity Central)

Kunst is known as a graffiti and stencil artist, but he adopted a new medium in order to create this portrait of French musician Serge Gainsbourg. Kunst is a big fan of the singer, so he spent three years collecting used cigarette filters to create this amazing – and kind of disgusting – portrait of Gainsbourg.

cigarette-butt-portrait

(image via: Jinks Kunst)

Overall, there are 20,394 cigarette filters making up the legendary singer’s face. He was famously fond of smoking and drinking, making the choice of unusual medium completely logical. But besides fitting the subject, the medium is an ingenious way to clean up the streets in a small way. A cigarette butt portrait would be perfect for an environmentally-themed piece of art.

cigarette-filter-portrait

(image via: Oddity Central)

The portrait was created to mark the 20th anniversary of Gainsbourg’s death. It’s just one of a complete exhibit of unusual depictions of one of France’s greatest musical treasures. Jinks Kunst’s creation and a whole series of previously-unpublished photos of Gainsbourg are being displayed in Nantes.