Raya Kassisieh
51 1/8 x 31 1/2 x 7 7/8 in
Further images
Thorn Throne hangs from a single point and opens outward like a garment abandoned mid-gesture. Dark leaves worked by hand in goat hair and sheep's wool overlap and cascade, each one folding over the one beneath it, until the accumulated mass resolves into a long black fringe. At the crown, where the two halves meet, a small steel thorn catches the light.
The work brings animal fibre into a vegetal form, folding two kingdoms into a single silhouette. The leaf functions simultaneously as armour and drapery, bringing softness and threat together within the same form. The absent body suggested by the work remains at the centre of this tension, where protection and vulnerability occupy the same silhouette.
