Through the Center of the Orange-Planet

Through the Center of the Orange-Planet represents the monumental projection of a childhood game: cutting a human silhouette from an orange peel in such a way that the fruit’s columella reveals a male genital organ. The same gesture appears in a 1998 video performance by Louise Bourgeois. The work recalls early attempts to transform perishable reality into objects of meaning.

By reproducing this anthropomorphic cut-out of an orange through the finished technique of aluminum casting, the properties of the natural orange peel are suppressed. The male genital organ becomes present and solid at the center of the Earth, yet the orange peel cut-out frames it in an almost ridiculous state. The fragility of the masculine normative framework destabilizes the center of the world it itself defines, and, in psychoanalytic terms, castration undermines an entire universe.

The work is part of the broader project “Do I need a map to travel to the center of the Earth?”, which takes the form of a collection of oversized unusual objects forming a cabinet of curiosities, while also evoking the atmosphere of a child’s room.