The Wood of Suicides

Water chestnuts (Trapa Natans)
34 x 34 x 34 inches

The Wood of Suicides pays tribute to Dante’s vision of a concentrically spherical Netherworld where the self executed are ‘bore on the thorn of their own self slaughtering shame’, but the water chestnuts used to create Suicides also tell a contemporary tale. Trapa Natans are an invasive species from Asia that choke hundreds of acres of riverbeds and wetlands in the Northeast, particularly the Hudson River, killing native plants and dislocating fish and wildlife. Completely inedible, with an astounding capacity to reproduce, these thorny ‘devil nuts’ threaten to destroy dwindling and endangered areas.