In my sculpture, Expulsion II, I reference the story of The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, from 1427, as represented in Massacio’s Renaissance fresco. I retell this Judeo-Christian and anthropocentric narrative from nature’s perspective. In the retelling, I imagine a dystopian future in which nature slowly emerges from a magical cave to die. In the fresco, Adam and Eve slowly emerge from a narrow architectural opening representing a portal that opens to the utopian garden we do not see. The figures’ bodily gestures demonstrate an overwhelming sense of humiliation and sadness after having fallen from grace. They have tasted the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and they then suffer the consequences of divine punishment. The story is a devastating one. Two figures who once knew only bliss have their rose-colored world stripped from them. They are thrown into an uncertain future and fear their doom.
What are the Expulsion references that make up the body of my sculpture? To begin, my formal composition does not merely reference a cave; it also references a yoni. The yoni is the Sanksrit word for vulva and it is a triangular birthing symbol. The vulva is both a bodily place and an earthly place. An explanation is included in the Book of Symbols, Reflections on Archetypal Images. In referring to the vulva, Native-American authors Frank and Oswald White Bear Fredericks Waters state, “Through this deep orifice emerge menses, birth waters, birth blood and newborns. Similarly, water emerges through clefts in stone, plants sprout from seeds opening through earth and souls and spirits enter this world from the other side; souls reenter the hidden world in spirit journeys and at death.”[i] In retrospect, it is surprising to see how much the shape of my sculpture resembles the pictorial depiction of a female reproductive system even though my original references were Victorian decorative motifs. Why a cave and why a yoni? Caves as symbols represent passageways between the realm of the living and the dead. One also learns in the aforementioned book that womb-like caves were central features in the creation myths of many cultures. Additionally, in western literature, a cave marked the entrance to hell. The cave then, also references a place of death as well as life. It is a portal marking the transition between worlds. The yoni stands clearly as a symbol representing the origin of life. It is a birthing place and its outpouring could also symbolize a menstrual flow. Life, unable to exist in my projected future, spills out in a symbolic stream of death. I do not take an eco-feminist stance and say that nature is feminized when I borrow these cultural and literary symbols. My intent is to draw the analogy that the death of the natural realm could be compared to a final bodily and earthly expulsion, like a final last breath before dying. The realm existing beyond the cave portal is Earth. The space the viewer stands in is an imaginary and bizarre realm whose strangeness comes from the ambiguous body of the grotto and its fanciful materials. It is an anthropomorphic cave that looks a bit threatening because of its animation.
I was conscientious in using color in my project. The darkness emerging from the cave is black. Black in western culture is the color of death, and also symbolically the color of malignancy and evil as it is devoid of divine light. The figures in Masaccio’s painting cry as they exit Eden. How could I represent nature’s suffering after its banishment? We cannot see the flowers actually moving in my giant cave ornament, but we can imagine their whimpering and slow drift. The flowers’ colors and gestures help us imagine the action within the narrative. Blues and purples are the colors of bruises, sadness, and pain. If one studies my flowers closely, one will find that the flowers look wet and they leak the color of their sadness onto the black rock-like texture of the grotto. I bathed the flowers in thick resin. The flowers are literally weighed down by the resin but also metaphorically by their sadness. Occasionally in this mass of dark purples and blues, the viewer will stumble across a lurid red. These red roses bleed, like freshly extracted organs. I recognize that I anthropomorphize nature in my works. Scientists avoid and criticize the anthropomorphization of nature. In the act of projecting human qualities on non-human living entities then one distorts the truth of these beings’ lived experiences. My wish is not to devalue their sacred lives. Rather, anthropomorphizing nature in my work is an artistic strategy employed to reveal my own concerns about the fate of the planet.