Leaning Woman
Leaning Woman
25” X 6”
Mixed media: lamb skull, eland horns, raccoon skull, wasp nest, silver, partridge skulls
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This piece is a depiction of Mother Nature, bent with sorrow and yet serene in her grief, as she reflects upon a devastated world.
She is raised up on two long and elegant eland horns, who’s open tops define the space for her hips. The tips are her feet, one slightly in front of the other, bracing herself as she leans forward with her head downcast.
Her torso is formed from the open crania of two lamb’s skulls, as her body grieves for the original sin of agriculture. Placed together in opposing orientation, the eye sockets of one, form her hips, as the eye sockets of the other form her open shoulders. In her back, a winding spinal column, formed from bamboo coral, is embedded in the skulls.
Her brooding hair is made from the crumbled cells of an abandoned wasp’s nest and along her open throat runs a sea worm tube carved with rings, for her trachea. What remains of her breasts are two starving birds made from the skulls of partridges. With mouths wide open, they are looking up to her to feed them. Wasp paper and tarnished silver cover her pregnant belly.​
The entire front section of her torso can be lifted off.
Inside, the lambs palate and teeth are intertwined with her delicate topaz and silver filagree lungs, and a small bluejay skull for her stomach, with an attached pearl and silver, pancreas and spleen.
This structure can also be removed.
Within the cavity of her body, we discover her remaining organs. Her liver is a rough grey lump of a seashell with a rich purple opening and a small silver door. Behind this little door, a small pearl forms her gallbladder.
Her heart is in a deteriorating state.
It is made from a deep purple and grey bivalve seashell and sea worm tubes, atop a delicate translucent white limpet’s shell.
A tiny hinged door in the front can be opened. Inside the rich orange interior, we discover the remnants of something that has hatched.
Searching for the intruder , this section of the heart can be lifted off to reveal the hollow of the limpet shell.
Deep inside, another tiny heart is growing. it is beautiful and terrible, and formed from silver and garnets and pearl.
She has been been infiltrated. For just inside this tiny heart, resides a beetle larva. It is Diamphidia Nigroornata - that has been sometimes prized by hunters for the poisoning of their arrow tips.
On the outside of her heart an umbilical cord, made from a long and twisting, pale pink sea worm tube, winds down.
The interior of her womb, is aglow with vibrant tones of pale siennas and hints of orange.
Within it, we find her fetus, formed from a small piece of one of the lamb skulls and a tiny translucent cochlear dome from a beaver, for its little head.
Through its tiny belly, and the winding umbilical cord, it is receiving the contents of her heart….
Photo Credits: Marina Dempster