Fugo, 2009

Fugu (2009) is an analogue machine. It consists out of a dead dried globefish that the artist found on a beach in Taiwan. The poison of the globefish is lethal, and only the best chefs are allowed to prepare this fish, as they know which portions are safe to eat and the quantities in which it may be consumed. From the ceiling hangs a large funnel filled with fine sand. The force of gravity carries the sand downwards, passing through the globefish till he suffocates in his own sand. The work Fugu was conceived around the mechanical concepts of a sandglass and the mythology of Kronos. Kronos was the Titan god of time and the ages, and was regarded as particularly destructive and all-devouring. He ruled the cosmos during the so-called Golden Age, after castrating and deposing his father Ouranos (the Sky). In fear of a prophecy that he would be in turn be overthrown by his own son, Kronos swallowed each of his children as soon as they were born. Rhea managed to save the youngest, Zeus, by hiding him away on the island of Krete, and instead fed Kronos a stone wrapped in the swaddling clothes of an infant. The god grew up, forced Kronos to disgorge his swallowed offspring, and led the Olympians in a ten-year war against the Titans, before driving them defeated into the pit of Tartaros. Many human generations later, Zeus released Kronos and his brothers from this prison, and made the old Titan king of the Elysian Islands, home of the blessed dead.

Exhibited at OF bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing… at cubus-m Gallery, Berlin, 2014, curated by Pauline Doutreluingne.