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The symbolic meanings commonly attributed to snakes in different traditions and epochs are so contradictory and intense at the same time: original sin, lust, temptation, healing, life-giving energy… A devilish creature connected to the principles of Earth and Darkness on one end, and a mystical healer on the other. Which version will we choose to follow? Is Linda Wrong’s snake leading us towards the apocalypse, or envisioning a future cured from the current dark scenarios? As the social anthropologist Veronica Strang points out, in diverse pre-Christian mythologies across the globe, water serpents were often associated with rivers, seas and other water bodies, as well as related natural processes, as their guardians and embodiments – dragons rising from the waves, flowing from wells and springs, and drifting through mountain mists and clouds. The Christian, predominantly anthropocentric and patriarchal era, in Strang’s view represented by the figure of St. George killing the dragon over and over again, aimed at repressing the authority of such beings, and prioritizing humans within the distinction between nature and culture. And now, here we are, on top of the world, continuously destroying it under our very feet. It surely is the end of an era. And if the era to come still involves humans on some level, we might need to change our beliefs and values once again, appreciating natural and supernatural entities and letting them take us on the path of healing, rather than that of destruction. Wrong sees her snake sculpture as a creature overseeing causality, an arrow of time. What is yet to come is guarded with caution.

Linda Wrong (born 1989) graduated in 2019 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (studios of sculpture and intermedia), where she currently continues with her Ph.D. studies. Previously she studied in the performance studio of Jiří Kovanda at the Faculty of Art and Design, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. She also studied sculpture at the Seni Institute of Art in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Her work crosses the borders between art, design and installation. She intertwines the topics of modern mysticism, tradition, pop culture and society, inventing a personal reformulation of the above. She predominantly works with objects and installations, experimenting with innovative materials and methods stemming from the fields of contemporary sculpture and design.