EAT YOUR TAIL

“the snake sheds its skin just as the moon sheds its shadow.”[1] 

Originating in ancient Egyptian iconography, the ouroboros is a symbol of a serpent or dragon that eats its own tail representing the eternal life cycle of renewal—life, death, and rebirth. It emerges in many cultures including Greek magical traditions where it was later adopted as a symbol for alchemy. 

EAT YOUR TAIL presents a constellation of new works by Chrome Destroyer, Maya Gauvin, Teresa Holly, and Evan Sproat. Unraveling subtleties of the unconscious, these four emerging artists craft self-portraits that act as two-way mirrors into self-contained worlds. Informed by historical influences, mythological ruminations, and objects of metamorphosis they visualize how we inhabit stories and make sense of both inherited and novel kinships.[2]  

                                                 the well
                                    the spring                                                      
                     the ocean                                                     
          the glass                                                
the mirror  
                  falling into the crevice
old secrets waiting for an ear 
where does the symbol end, and the myth begin?

Chrome Destroyer’s digitally rendered still lifes are assemblages of loaded symbolic imagery that turn Western iconography on its head. ICXCXO shows a poised hand with polished nails delicately holding rosary beads, the gesture represents the Christian symbolism of Jesus blessing his followers. Rainbow, prayer beads, raindrops, cleansing. Stained, the saintly figure in Broke My Teeth On Something Hard is St. Augustine, a prominent bishop and Christian theologian known for his scholarly contributions to the development of the Western church and Western philosophy.[3] The chin is breaking, the glass is tipping, the sword uncomfortably close to the neck, all of these elements evoke the fragility of iconic patriarchal imagery expressing its fraught lineage of religious transcendence. Misguided.

One legend of Augustine describes how he came across a boy trying to pour the ocean into a hole in the sand. When Augustine commented that this was impossible, the boy replied, “No more so than for you to explain the mysteries on which you are meditating.”[4]

“All dreams, all religious mythologies are seamlessly connected to each other under the surface.”[5]

Referencing the circular form of the ouroboros, Gauvin’s sculpture petrifaction (waiting at the well) is made up of material fragments gathered during rituals of walking through our world of excess. Standing poetically “like a quiet and solemn monument,” Gauvin writes that “its form echoes many ancient sacred sites which can be found around the world.” The term petrification teeters between scientific and mythological explanations. Gauvin notes that “Scientifically, it describes the much slower, geological process of one material/mineral being replaced by another, as in the formation of fossils,” while mythologically it’s the “phenomenon of a person/animal/entity being ‘turned to stone’, as a dramatic and instantaneous consequence to some kind of folly or wrongdoing.”[6] 

deep oceanic blues,
for a moment i turned into a pillar of salt,
mystery traditions,
refuse gathering rituals,
a mosaic of castaways
explanations of love,
otherworldliness quietly amplified

A stained glass artwork by Gauvin titled salt range acts as “both image and picture window; a viewpoint from which to see into and look out of.” The ceramic frame gracefully holds the weight of the stained glass that “like snaking silver rivers, the continuous lines of solder run through the image, adding a surface topography.” The hues of pink, teal, blue, and white striations embedded in the glass perform stories of the unconscious. In relation to the creative process of each of these works, Gauvin shares a reflection, asking “How do we digest and accept this reality that we have trapped ourselves in, a world of simultaneous material excess and spiritual scarcity?”[7]

we carry, carry symbols forward, passing them on, talismans,
i am an archaeological site of ancient symbolism

Meditations made by hand, Sproat’s pink, fleshy, performative sculptures are ruminations on intimacy, deception, and security within the home. The weight of cinder block, wood, and papier-mâché compliment the delicate textures of ribbon, silk, thread, felt, and faux-fur that craft emotionally complex portraits of what Sproat describes as “unresolved self-discovery, love, and disappointment manifested through a set of tragic heroes.”[8] Through animism of the Trojan horse (to pull the wool over one’s eyes, inviting the enemy into a protected place) and the invasive or hermiting crab, Sproat becomes a chameleon metamorphosing into guises that at first appear playful but are unsettling explorations into agency and weakness, security and danger, honesty and deception. Aptly titled, Anagnorisis, he says is a reference to “the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character's true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances.”[9] Sproat writes of the play that he has created, “standing as an abject and fleshy substitute, I elicit a sense of fear and pity that comfortably situates the audience somewhere between a rock and a plush place.”[10]

“I’m fixated on the idea of something from one world transforming into something from another world – that moment when it’s not quite clear which world it’s in.”[11]

Teresa Holly creates figures of unknown origin, drawing trickery into form. Appendages of the body are drawn carrying stacked heads that can be perceived as faces of multiple personas, masks, or past lives. Who are they and where are they headed? Still, in mid-movement, I wonder if I’ve caught them in the midst of a performance, a dance that might resume when I look away. It all feels very cheeky. Seductive lips speak anatomically ambiguous forms. Floral embellishments don’t always make things sweeter. Notice the cuttings where new motifs emerge from the paper stage. For Holly, these imagined forms, organic matter, and cuttings are elements that “come together to display the before, during and aftermaths of a performance.”[12] Playful trickery, a blue flame but nothing burns. Two ears, tongue, hand and a pair of heels is a new direction for Holly who has transformed a drawing into papier-mâché. With incomplete features, is it a monster, a troll, a mythical being? Its tongue is out in harmless mockery, concealing what it truly feels, leaving it up to your imagination to complete its character.

the air is cold, the leaves have fallen, the bones of trees exposed. these days darkness wraps us like a blanket, pulling us inward to the quiet as one year transforms into the next. don’t be afraid to eat your own tail. 

END NOTES

[1] “Ep. 2: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth — 'The Message of the Myth'.” Billmoyers.com, 22 June 1988, billmoyers.com/content/ep-2-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-message-of-the-myth/ (accessed 6 December 2019).
[2] Haraway, Donna. “A Kinship of Feminist Figurations.” The Donna Haraway Reader, Routledge, 2004. pp. 1.
[3] “Augustine of Hippo.” Wikipedia, n.d., en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo (accessed 6 December 2019).
[4] Carr-Gomm, Sarah, “Saints and Their Miracles.” Hidden Symbols in Art, Rizzoli, 2001, pp. 170.
[5] “Terence Mckenna: Who Are We?” YouTube, Recorded in December of 1994, at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA., 29 Oct. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzNueNguqyg.
[6] Gauvin, Maya, artist’s statement, 2019
[7] Gauvin, 2019
[8] Sproat, Evan, artist’s statement, 2019
[9] “Anagnorisis - Examples and Definition of Anagnorisis.” Literary Devices, 27 Mar. 2017, literarydvices.net/anagnorisis.
[10] Sproat, 2019
[11] Woodward, Daisy. “Meet the Man behind Björk's out-of-This-World Masks.” Dazed, 27 Nov. 2017, dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/38197/1/meet-the-man-behind-bjorks-out-of-this-world-masks-james-merry-utopia.
[12] Holly, Teresa, artist’s statement, 2019