Swamp

Woman-crocodile Tears

Why does the crocodile cry?

For a while now, Ines Verdugo has shared her life with a crocodile. Sometimes, the crocodile prowls the rooms, and many times, it remains still in contemplation. The crocodile accompanies Ines in her creative processes and her daily activities. “I used to live in an estuary,” it whispers to her ear, “where the sweet waters met the salty ocean. Now, I live in a swamp: between the still water and my salty tears, the door to the infraworld can be found.” When she holds it in her arms, with its open jaws and tense feet, the artist is transformed into a woman-crocodile.

Is it not the rain that fertilizes?

In a Costa Rican zoo, isolated amongst other specimens, lives the virgin-crocodile. This
summer alone, she laid 14 eggs, one of which had a perfectly formed fetus that, although never born, possessed 99.9% of its mother’s genetic material. The virgin-crocodile got pregnant in solitude, with no companion, propelled by the desire to reproduce. This is the first ever registered case of facultative parthenogenesis in the Crocodylidae family- for some, a self- conservation miracle; for others, a jurasik time anomaly.

I don’t know why the crocodile cries either.

Ines’s crocodile has become a “transitional object”. Like in her previous projects, the artist links herself to the material element through active listening and imagination processes to free it from previous lives and grant it its own stories and relationals. To develop these narratives, the artist pays attention to her transitional object and takes note of the memories, stories and desires that are whispered to her ear. In Swamp, Ines concentrates on a taxidermic piece to untangle the symbolic dimension of the crocodile’s figure and weave it again with a crochet needle. The pieces composing the exhibit register the birth and development of the woman-crocodile, functioning as a second skin layered with colorful crochet scales.

If my children could not see me, I would also cry.

With their powerful jaws, crocodiles do not chew, they just bite and swallow, shaking their prey until they are torn to pieces. The mother-crocodile maws are, at the same time, transport and crushing chambers. To transport her newborns, the mother-crocodile takes them into her maws. When open, a safe haven; when closed, a tunnel with no exit.

In the end, I still do not know why the crocodile cries.

In Swamp, hands turn into claws and maws into lips. Ines’s crocodile’s new life is showcased through the exhibit. Nuances regarding the maternal concept of lacanian psychoanalysis engage in dialog with a message of urgent planetary ecology: mother nature, with her crocodile’s maws can devour her children any time. Through inverted and transparent eyelids, the crocodile cries. It is perhaps because of savage memories that resist domestication. It is perhaps because of the maternal ravage that keeps the crocodile alert between land and water. Surely, self-preservation.

Paulina Ascencio Fuentes and Inés Verdugo*
September 2023

*Each section’s titles come from Ines Verdugo journals and worked as idea catalysts. Therefore, this text was created with her collaboration.