Glass, natural stone, concrete, wood 45х50 sm 2024
These are the hands of the Lord. The Lord protects us from a star with dangerous splintering edges, the Wormwood Star. Wormwood is bitter, wormwood is poisonous. Wormwood is a universal biblical symbol of suffering and bitterness. It is also a symbol of punishment.
Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: I am feeding this people with wormwood, and giving them poisonous water to drink. (Jer. 9:15)
John the Evangelist writes about wormwood in the Apocalypse, mentioning ‘a star burning like a lamp’.
A great star, named Wormwood, falls from heaven and poisons a third of the rivers and springs of water. (Revelation 8:10–11)
John calls the wormwood ἀψίνθιον (apsintion), that is, ’unfit for drinking’, or simply bitter.
In the Strugatsky brothers' novel A Devil Among Men, the Wormwood Town is Chernobyl. Its waters are poisoned, its waters are bitter. But it's not just dead water that's bitter. The poisoned leaves are bitter. The poisonous wind is bitter. Poison is everywhere and in everything, in bodies and in hair.
We are all fragile and helpless before the shards of Wormwood star.