Model B: Orchid Mantis, 2023, 3D printed sculpture with embedded media display and LCD display with dynamic video loop, 44 x 43 x 40 cm
Plinth acrylic and aluminum and gravel
This sculptural study of the lifeform known as colloquially as the Orchid Mantis, exhibits some curious hybrid and chimeric behaviors that refer both to plants and animals. Not much is known of its anatomy or behavior- but the design of this sculpture implies that it served as a kind of religious object as well as a focus for ritual activity. Anthropologists have surmised that it might have been used in practices relating to therianthropy or shapeshifting, where identity, gender, species, and genus are fluid in the context of the ritual space. Without other artifacts, we can only guess at the nature of the society that created this object, and how their people might have lived.
'Artifacts from the Age of Collapse'
--The philosopher Giles Deleuze proposes the concept of "becoming animal", in which in between states of being, (wolf/man), there is no fixed state of full wolf-ness, of full man-ness, only states of transition, between singular, and multiple, or between gender, genus, species. --
--The idea of the hybrid as a model for a culture, or as hoaxes that suggest alternate origins, such as the Fiji Mermaid or the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, appeal to me as they pose interesting questions as to the motives of their hoaxers, what prompted them to cobble together disparate components to construct a fiction?--
--The sculpture incorporates a screen as a view to the inner life of these objects/entities/concepts- a reference to devotional objects like Tibetan thangkas, catholic reliquaries, or other sacred relics, while also being framed by a sculpture with both hybrid characteristics.--
These three threads exist as nodal points on a matrix, in which the sculpture and the world it inhabits exists as a physical manifestation of a process.
Photography by Jonathan Tan
