Eve came first, with a piece of her rib on Adam's knee. He bowed before her in the Garden of Inequality, acknowledging her wisdom. As she told him in "I Heard the Wild Gander"* (paraphrased):
"Bow down to me Adam, bow down sullen deuce,
I am wise, I am woman, far wiser than Zeus
More ancient than thunder, more honeyed than thighs
But something far deeper illumines my eyes.
You are merely a shadow of what is to be
You will wither tomorrow like vines in Navarro
You will shiver and slither toward nonentity
But fear not scant Adam for something will be
It will not be thee, it may not be me
But always and afterward something will be."
Eve is copper, an amalgam of skins and earth tones, a blend of biologies and geographies, a material that resists corrosion by air and water, gossip and derogation, a material mined from deep within the earth. She is all attitude, saucy and defiant. She may well be God's selfie, product of the Creator's dreamscape. What happens if God wakes up, looks in dismay at Her creatures on earth, and says "Siri, delete them"?
Adam is pure black, a tribute to black men everywhere. When did you last see a black man honored as the subject of a piece of sculpture? As a sports hero, perhaps, but hidden underneath a uniform, making him a pretend Caucasian. But Adam does not pretend. His only uniform is the beauty of his black skin.
When did Inequality metastasize into Evil? Sarin gas - today - bombed at children? Infants wearing bullet-laden vests? Sexual impulses acted out on younglings?**
Why should any child be whomped, thomped, fingered, bullseyed by erotomanic frat brats?***
Eve and Adam exist in a sphere of our imagining, in the realm of myth and fairy tale. These two sculptures exist, in the digital flesh, to remind us that myths are made to be unmade; that we are all instant memes in an infinitely vast cosmos; to tell us that unless we wrench ourselves free of our addiction to war and violence, hatred and discrimination, genocide, infanticide, and femicide, we may all perish by our own hands if not by an intergalactic intervention.
Maybe it's time to stop taking cides, to decide on our fate, to stop the debate. Maybe even Adams cringe at what we are doing to ourselves and each other. Maybe...
c. Corinne Whitaker 2015
*from "I Heard the Wild Gander".
**from "Burn Baby Burn!".
***from "Whomp".