Yet, I endured for you
large-scale salt sculptures
2025

The Barbary lions of North Africa were casualties of grand ecological destruction, part and parcel of a process of resource extraction and imperial settlement. By 1950, they were extinct in the wild. Around the same time, excavations at the Tower of London complex revealed the bones of two lions displaced to England under Richard I's rule. It is assumed that these captives helped inspire the Barbary iconography of English heraldry, becoming symbols of vigilant guardianship even as their undernourished bodies rotted away. Indeed, sick reversals are commonplace in this story. The symbolic lion was forged by the very powers that sought its physical destruction. Here we find the Barbary lions encrusted, lying on beds of salt. In this rendering, the creatures are suspended between their fame and extinction. Free from their enforced role as imperial guardians, they appear to reclaim life in stillness, returning in form as ghosts.


Commissioned by 421 Arts Campus.