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Björk and Biophilia

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In one of my earliest book reviews, I reviewed the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. I wrote that a trope “that really interested me was how VanderMeer’s writing can be conceived of as a post-DNA-theory, “bio-philic” Lovecraftian horror” and I also acknowledged the source of that adjective as being the Icelandic artist, Björk.

In a tweet that captured stills from one of her recent shows, she again showed how thoroughly consumed her visions are in and by biophilia. Here, Björk shortens the distance between the imagined reality of VanderMeer’s Area X and our reality. Look at this glorious encasing costume. Notice its hexagonal tessellated structure that recalls a human being encased by a honeycomb. But the honeycombs also seem to have feelers that extend off at a perpendicular to the shape of the “fabric.” From her midsection down, she appears to be encased in golden spheroid coral suggesting that, as time passes, the translucent windows turn opaque and then spheroid as if she’s undergoing some sort of metamorphosis or live entombing to becoming golden coral.

It’s the hallmark of VanderMeer’s biophilic body horror that one cannot tell the difference between metamorphosis and being imprisoned in a new body. Ovid would have loved it.

It’s sublime!