The Endanged Pangolin: Thabiso Mohlakoana

Day Three of The Lockdown Collection in South Africa celebrates sculptural work created by Thabiso Mohlakoana (born Lesotho, 1991) of Ardmore Ceramic Arts studio. The project's instagram account explains the offered ceramic bowl, onto which six pangolins have sculpted:

"Delicately sculptured by Thabiso Mohlakoana, it is a work interrupted by the current COVID19 Lockdown when Thabiso and all South Africans, went home in an effort to protect one another. He created this bowl with multiple pangolins around the rim, in the hope that they will survive extinction after the virus has passed. He is hoping that new awareness will grow around the trafficking of animals and that man and nature can once again find a way to co-exist. #artforgood #Ardmore #thelockdowncollection #ArdmoreArtists"

Social anthropologists have been deeply interested in pangolin since the groundbreaking work of Mary Douglas  (1957; 1968) on the symbolism of the animal among the Lele people of the Kasai of Central Africa (now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo)  The pangolin, a kind of scaly anteater, is understood in Lele communities as a deeply anomalous being, a mammal covered with seemingly fish-like scales (actual composed to keratin, similar to human fingernails and toenails) that lives on land and ascends up trees towards the sky. Like humans, and unlike most non-human mammals, pangolin females generally give birth to one offspring at a time. Violating conventional categories of classification, they are venerated as sacred; dead pangolins may be paraded around the community, honored as if they are dead chiefs or kings, consistent with the understanding that sovereigns similarly transcend all categorical oppositions and mediate between the varied domains of the visible and invisible universe.

Prized as a delicacy in China and southeast Asia, pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world. All eight species are highly endangered. It appears that a great number of pangolins are smuggled out of Africa to Asian markets, where they are sold for food or because their scales and organs are believed to be efficacious medicines. There also appears to be a widespread tendency in many African societies to ingest or burn pangolin parts for medicinal powers.

In recent months, pangolins have come to considerable international attention, as some infectious disease specialists have theorized that precursor RNA material, long existing in certain bat species (which harbor natural immunity to many viruses) may have been recombined with pangolin genetic material, during their confinements in wild animal wet markets in China, leading to the emergence of the particularly virulent novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19.

Thabiso Mohlakoana with pangolin sculptures

The Temminck’s Ground Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) is the only species of pangolin found within southern Africa, and Mohlakoana may have become familiar with this fascinating animal while growing up in Lesotho. He has extensively incorporated pangolin imagery into his earlier  work, and has now returned to this enigmatic being in his "Lockdown" project. His sculptured bowl, now waiting in the temporarily empty Ardmore Studios, will be painted by Jabu Nene when the national Lockdown is complete. 

In the bowl now available for purchase, Thabiso has created six pangolins circling the rim, proceeding in a counter-clockwise direction.  Perhaps the work honors the multiple species of pangolin around the world, all equally under threat. The circular procession, around a bowl shaped like the lowerhalf of a globe,  may also evoke an inter-related global chain of being, particularly salient now that so many members of the human family, close kin of the pangolin in African cosmological systems of thought, are now endangered from the virus all over over fragile planet.  Thabiso writes that each pangolin scale that he sculpts can be thought of as replacing on the scales torn off in the markets that have nearly drive creatures to extinction. In that sense, this art work is a powerful undertaking of repair, at at time of manifold crisis in health, society, and environment.

Thabiso Mohlakoana, Ardmore Pangolin in Bowl.

Thabiso opposes the use and consumption of actual pangolins in the wet trade. Yet, this lovely work can be thought of as a kind of tangible prayer, made manifest though carefully balanced symmetries. Through its remarkable cross-cutting symbolism (integrating and transcending conventional terrestrial/aquatic and the human/animal divides) the image of this enigmatic may function as an new kind of symbolic medicine, restoring balance to our earthly home and to all, human and animal, who dwell upon it. 





Day Six:  Diane Victor

The featured Lockdown Collection artist for Day Six, Diane Victor, also presents a work featuring the pangolin, organized, like Thabiso's bowl, in circular form. "Eating one's own tail-Pangolin" plays with the ancient symbol of the ouroboros, a serpent consuming its own tail.  In diverse cultures across the millennia, the snake shedding its skin has been a potent image of  revitalization and rebirth; the icon of the snake consuming itself can be a intensified signifier of renewal and cycles of death and regeneration of life.

In Victor's smoky image the classical serpent is replaced by a scaly pangolin, a being, as noted above, that may have played a critical role in the "remixing" of genetic material leading to the birth of the novel coronavirus, even as pangolin species have been critically endangered through hunting and trafficking.  The shape recalls the pangolin's tendency to roll itself into a dense ball when sensing danger.  In Victor's circular rendition, the animal comes to resembled the spherical, spiky SAR-Cov-2 virus itself, possibly emergent within this perilously fragile creature. As in Thabiso Mohlakoana's work, the pangolin poses a fundamental challenge for humanity: will it solely be a harbinger of disaster, or will it serve as a clarion call,for resetting the balance of humanity and global ecosystems?








References

Mary Douglas.  Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1957), pp. 46-58

Mary Douglas Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Purity and Danger. Routledge.  1968.