The South Atlantic Anomaly, 2022—Gouache, watercolor, silver leaf and Armenian bole on cotton paper. 70x100cm.

“Earth and Sky are the two banks of one great river.” Roberto Calasso (1998)

Iron rich earth flows in rivers, as seen from above. The iron pigment is gathered from the 700,000-year-old glacier-capped volcano: Snæfellsjokull, in Iceland.

Currents of liquid iron alloy in Earth’s outer core generates its magnetic field, a process called the geodynamo. Around 3.7 billion years ago, the Moon also had a strong magnetic dynamo, and therefore a moving metallic core. She’s churning Earth’s liquid outer core by deforming its mantle, when she affects the tides. The Moon’s proximity opens Earth, her gravitas: a sculptress—magmatic outpourings blossom in this interface.

The South Atlantic Anomaly is an area where energetic charged particles from solar winds comes closest to Earth's surface, dipping down to an altitude of 200 kilometres. The weakness of Earth’s magnetic field in this region leads to an increased flux of energetic particles—a voluptuous passage between the interior and the exterior.

Moon’s connection to Earth is charged with electromagnetic waves—invisible oceans with crests transcending the mundane. Somatic formations are growing in the interface of Earth and Moon, a semiotics of Nature. The white animal bodies are ornaments, sky-clearings, a somatization of the heights. In Alchemy, there was a stage in the transformation of lead into gold that was called: Albedo. Albedo correlated to the Moon, reflection, the Soul, the Psyche. It was an elevated stage of becoming conscious of the dark gravitas of the leaden melancholy of Nigredo—a clearing in the dark forest of the unconscious, instinct became transformed into: psychic instinct. The burrows of Earth gleam in their eccentricity. By changing the moorings of her being—by the lunar reflection of matter—the Soul became embodied in Nature’s glistening body.

Two leopards are embracing–the Sky is tinctured red, moulded by rivers.