Philip Morris gave recycled IQOS devices a second life as a DNA sculpture (interview)

An artist known for challenging how materials are valued worked with a device recycling stream that most people never see, to make its afterlife visible.

Assemble thousands of components recovered from discarded IQOS devices into a sculpture modelled on DNA — every end holds a beginning.

Koleilat stacked the recovered components into a sculpture whose structure echoes DNA and its cycle of regeneration and renewal; a film follows the hands-on build of placing, adjusting and stepping back. The work, GENESIS, was unveiled at Arthaus Beirut.

The sculpture was unveiled at Arthaus Beirut and the making process was filmed; beyond the interview coverage no third-party results are reported (self-reported in the interview where quoted).

At Arthaus Beirut, artist and sculptor Rachel Koleilat and Philip Morris Lebanon unveiled GENESIS, a sculpture created from thousands of components recovered from IQOS devices as part of PMI's IQOS Device Circular Program. In an interview with Rim Nsouli for Special Madame Figaro Arabia, Koleilat says her first thought was about beginnings — how an object that has reached the end of its original purpose can start something new — captured in the phrase "Every end holds a beginning". The work draws its form from the structure of DNA and its connection to regeneration and renewal.

In the interview, Koleilat describes how the devices changed her visual language. She usually works with small objects and repetition, but these brought precise shapes, metallic surfaces and a sense of technology, structured enough to become fluid through composition. From a distance the sculpture reads as a whole; up close, viewers discover the individual objects that form it. She says discarded material appeals to her because its own shapes, textures and limitations lead to ideas she would never reach with a blank canvas.

She says she was most excited to see the process captured on film — the placing, adjusting and stepping back that turned parts into a piece — and that the project has made her more attentive to overlooked materials in future work. She also told the magazine she would like to see more collaborations connecting Lebanese artists and designers with businesses holding unused materials, and more public art to carry these ideas into everyday life.

A corporate recycling program became a physical artwork people can look at, instead of a sustainability statement.

The piece keeps two readings alive at once: a coherent form from afar, thousands of branded device parts up close.

The source is a Q&A and is flagged as one, so the artist's own account stays clearly attributed rather than written up as fact.

A recycling program becomes tangible when a sculptor reframes its waste: hand the discarded material to an artist and the sustainability claim turns into something people walk up to and look at.

The interview was published on 9 October 2026. Koleilat says the experience will carry into her future work with discarded materials; no follow-up results were reported.