Invert Convert

Ernst Haeckel, the German romantic celebrated for merging science and art was a younger contemporary and admirer of Charles Darwin and did much to promote his theories. He put together the word ecology and is known among his prolific works for his illustrations of evolutionary trees. The phylogenetic topiary has since accrued branches, in reverse proportion to the extinctions perpetrated by the human animal sporting an inverted tree of  life printed a t-shirt. The roots have also been scrutinized to reveal they are not only branchlike but reticulate and intertangled in webs. In the mid seventies Carl Woese revolutionized microbiology with the discovery of the third kingdom of life, adding Archaea to the known two, Eukaryotes (nucleus endowed cells) and Bacteria. This led to the studies of horizontal gene transfers (HGT) which can occur between divergent species through processes of transformation, conjugation and transduction, thus laterally bridging different domains of life. At the distant source of the RNA manipulations that made the Covid-19 vaccine possible are three kingdoms, original strands now in the guise of three wise monkeys, degenerated into malformed gargoyles but who still know how to keep a secret amidst genes moving sideways. The sinister story they withhold is that of a single lineage who tore the tangled interspecies mesh with its alienated intention and left a messy track of carnage and bondage. They know the contender who believed was the fittest and became the self-appointed interpreter of nature is really a time-traveling centurion, an uprooted enforcer of dependency with a conversion plan. Its altar is a confessional with a kneeling bench padded with the scalps of exploited species, tokens of collateral damage to the biosphere, for the adulation and supplication of its subjects who in the soils of insurgencies and revolutions, count the coins of their Judas pay-off by their land-grabbing creditor, the virtual priestess and secular absolver of their original debt. The deracinated entity finds anchor in mercenary populations, rules them with fertility rites from behind a shield of equanimous androgyny, proud matron of an expedient technocracy that induces a desire for perpetual growth in her dwarfed slaves and wears their emancipation like a fetish.

Multi-Media Sculpture

Wood; Clay; Aluminum; Cloth; Wax; Mannequin bust; Magnifying glass; Inkjet print; Paint; Led lights.

69" high x 20' x 20".