"Kissy Missy—we found her in a discount bin in Surfers Paradise, that glittering strip where everyone is passing through and nothing is built to last. She’d been marked down twice. Pink plastic, soft body, long arms made for hugging, and a mouth full of teeth.

She was designed to be loved and came out wrong. Too pink for comfort. Too sweet to be frightening, too toothy to be sweet. The kind of thing a child begs for and a parent quietly moves to the back of the cupboard. Made in her thousands and wanted by nobody, which is a very particular kind of loneliness.

We knew her immediately.

Warhol understood that an icon isn’t always born, it’s repeated. Borrowed made Pop. Mickey Mouse, the Coke bottle, the soup can: ordinary objects held up to the light so long they turned holy. We wanted that for her. To take the reject from the bargain bin and shoot her like a starlet, dress her, worship her, print her until she’s unavoidable. We’re not here to fix her. The teeth stay in.

This is the work we keep making: the creature that’s too much, too bright, too strange to be filed away neatly, and the joy of loving it anyway. She’s soft and she bites. She’s pink well past the point of good taste. She was thrown out, and now she’s an icon, because we decided she was.

Every discarded thing is just waiting for someone to turn up with a camera and call it beautiful." — The Huxleys