The Dancer V, Beaufort 21

The Dancer V emerges out of Marguerite’s project High Tide (2019), and is premised upon the idea that animals may adopt religious behaviours in the face of the impending climate catastrophe. Installed on the breakwater in Blankenberge, Belgium, the winged sculpture appears to leap skywards, depicting a lone marine mammal engaged in a ritual dance. Nearby, on the Belgian coastline, fossil, flint and bone was discovered by archaeologists. Such findings suggest the presence of a vast, prehistoric plain that was once inhabited by humans, animals and plants before a submarine landslide 8,000–10,000 years ago gave rise to what is known today as the North Sea. Set within a real ecosystem, Marguerite’s mythical creature performs imagined, cosmic incantations, while the site offers up its own mysteries of past organic life, now long extinct.