Flights

KUNSTKAMMER

Each of my pilgrimages aims at some other pilgrim, this time I immediately recognized the sensitive hand of Charlotta. In the oblong jar, with a lid that looked like a sculpture, there floated a small fetus with closed eyes hanging from two horse hairs. Its little feet touched the dyed-red remains of the bed at the bottom of the jar. On the jar’s shale lid a little underwater still life – everything evoking the marine, even the protagonist of this exhibit, the fetus. We all come from water. Which is no doubt why Charlotta adorned this one with seashells, starfish, corals and sponges, and at its centre, a dried-out seahorse – a hippocampus.

One other specimen made an impression on me – conjoined twins preserved in Stygian water, and next to it, their dried skeleton. Proof of great economy of material – two specimens with one double body.