OUROBOROS

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent devouring its own tail. The earliest known representations are attributed to ancient Egypt, and it is found cross-culturally in spiritual, artistic, and scientific contexts. The symbol is often interpreted as the cycles of life and death, and is frequently misinterpreted in the Global West as an unnatural state of self-cannibalism.

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OUROBOROS uses imagery that references natural cycles, time, and death to meditate on the contradictory significance of the Anthropocene. The work draws from the visual language of geology, geography, data science, and ecology to build images that elicit anxiety and a sense of immateriality.

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By valuing death as essential for renewal the work reframes destruction as a process necessary for creation. Through a non-anthropocentric lens the micro and macro systems we are part of can be looked toward as metaphor for re-imaginings of our relationships to land, labour, and other human beings. OUROBOROS challenges presumptions of human understanding and questions internalized responses to death, cycles, and time.