Metamorphoses, Ovid

In the prologue to “Metamorphoses,” Ovid writes “…spin me a thread from the world’s beginning down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.”

A hand-transcription of the entire poem onto a single “thread” of paper that is a kilometer long of writing. The thread is wrapped into a globe-like ball over which a faint watercolor of a map of the world is painted. In order to read this book from the beginning, the poem has to unroll and the shape of the world will change.

(The artist is grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for a Bellagio Residency which made this work possible.)

Title: Metamorphoses, Ovid

Size: 28″ diameter
Materials: paper handmade in Italy, ink
Date: 2014
Photographed by: Thomas Little