Ammonoidea

This piece depicts a woman standing steeply arched backwards, on her back foot, with her head thrown back and her arms almost desperate in their upward reach to the universe. 

 

Two fossilized ammonoids form her buttocks.  Contained within them is a blueprint from the universe. 

 

Generated from a recursive mathematical function is Fibonacci’s famous sequence of numbers, and the Golden Ratio, Phi.  

This mysterious ratio is manifested everywhere in the wonderful formations of nature.  From the swirl of our galaxy and the unfurling of leaves around a branch, to the curl of a fetus forming in the womb, and of course, to the beautiful spiral of the ammonoid. 

 

When we examine the internal structure of Ammonoidea’s buttocks, it reveals the wonderful spiral growth of the cephalopods, recorded by the increments of each newly generated cell.

 

The ammonoid uses a siphuncle, that threads through each and every chamber, to control its buoyancy, by either letting in air or water to its historical chambers.

 

And perhaps, just as each old chamber is sealed off and forever carried, so it is that our own threaded histories are walled off, but forever a part of us. 

 

Perhaps unfurling according to the rules of Phi, we navigate our destinies, rising and falling as we tap into the wonderful and sometimes terrible past that forms the magnificent structure of woman. 

 

Her legs are formed from bushbuck horns, and her torso is constructed from a steenbok skull, where only the cores are left from of its missing horns, to form her outstretched arms.

 

Her body has been breached on one side, with the organs exposed.

 

Her little seashell liver, has slipped out from the safety of her abdomen and sunk down into the cradle of her hip, that s defined by the Steenbok’s eye socket.   Lifting open its silver door a little pearl gallbladder lies hidden within the deep magentas of the shell’s interior. 

 

Removing the delicate bone cover that is Ammonoidea’s pregnant belly, we discover her reproductive system, depicted by a tiny beaver skull.

 

Fallopian tubes of silver attach to the cochlear ovaries, as the nasal passages form the vagina, with a tiny ring of silver for its entrance. 

 

The orange incisors nicely form her labial slit and underneath, from behind, we can just make out the tip of a silver urethra. 

 

Depicted as treasure and adorned with sterling silver, the amusement that her ‘Beaver’ is a beaver,  becomes overshadowed by the realization that her flesh has been torn open from the top of her legs, exposing the cores of the bushbuck horns and her vulvar region, and laying bare her injuries.