One of Miley Cyrus’s sculptures. Photo: V Magazine.

Brace yourselves: Miley Cyrus, she of the twerk, ever-wagging tongue, and countless tabloid headlines, is poised to break into the art world with “Dirty Hippie,” an exhibition of collaged sculptures crafted from such unconventional materials as a vibrator (a gift from a fan), a marijuana joint, party hats, and a pineapple—which sounds more like the makings of an orgy than a gallery show.

Apparently, sculpting has become a bit of a release for Cyrus over the course of the last two and a half months. “I hated 2014 because everything that could go wrong kept going wrong. Being in the hospital, my dog dying…” she explained in an interview with V Magazine. “So then I started taking all of those shit things and making them good, and being like, ‘I’m using it.’”

Such “shit” appears to be mostly an assortment of brightly colored plastic goods purchased at chain stores and airports, or thrown on stage by fans during the singer’s ongoing Bangerz Tour. To hear Cyrus tell it, “I had a bunch of fucking junk and shit, and so instead of letting it be junk and shit, I turned it into something that made me happy.”

“They say money can’t buy happiness and it’s totally true,” she added. “Money can buy you a bunch of shit to glue to a bunch of other shit that will make you happy, but…obviously the shit you buy doesn’t make you happier because I’m sitting here gluing a bunch of junk to stuff.” Sage words.

Indeed, Cyrus’s foray into art-making seems largely motivated by not so much unhappiness, but boredom: “I just sit around and smoke weed anyway,” she admits, “so I might as well sit around, smoke weed, and do something. And this is me doing something. I love it.”

Miley Cyrus.
Photo: © 2014 Patrick McMullan Company, Inc.

If it all seems part of Cyrus’s carefully-crafted (and, to our mind, painfully self-conscious) image as a hard-living, pot- and sex-loving party girl, well, perhaps that’s part of the plan. “This seems so fucking lame to say,” she admits, “but I feel like my art became kind of a metaphor—an example of my life.”

After sharing her progress on her drug-fueled handiwork on Instagram throughout the summer, the former child star is ready for her public debut, which will take place during designer Jeremy Scott’s New York Fashion Week show on September 10. The next day, the sculptures will go on view at the gallery in V‘s Soho offices at 11 Mercer Street.

So get ready for a bedazzled hamster toy, a head made up of tiny teddy bears that appears to have hair made of anal beads, and dime bags and other drug paraphernalia set alongside USB drives full of the singer’s photos. It may seem a random assemblage of plastic detritus, but Cyrus promises it all has a deeper meaning.

“I did the pineapple because you know what they say about pineapple, right?” she explains of one piece. “If you drink a lot of pineapple juice you’re going to have yummy cum. So that’s why I put it on the dick with a bunch of babies, and it says, ‘Fuck.’ I try to think about everything so it has a story to me.”

And who is artnet News to judge if that story is “pineapple juice makes for delicious semen”? Cyrus sees a higher calling in such work: “to me, it made me not a fucking pop star dumbass. And that’s my goal in my life: to not die a pop pop dumb dumb. I can’t. I will freak out.”