Baltic Sea Krait

This frottage from 2024 is a continuation of the series of snake frottages that I have been creating since the COVID lockdowns. It has been designed so that there is the potential to link it up to pre-existing (and future) snake frottages to create one continuous serpent.

​The blue and black stripes are inspired by the sea krait, a venomous, semi-aquatic snake that can be found along the eastern coast of Australia. I am fascinated by the sea krait's liminal status as a creature that exists both on land and in water, possessing a paddle-like tail for swimming but needing to come ashore for its digestive and reproductive functions. Unlike fully aquatic sea snakes, alongside whom they co-evolved, sea kraits retain physiological vestiges of their land-based ancestors.  

I have been looking more into the mythology around snakes, in particular, the Lithuanian legend of Eglė the Serpent Queen. The sea krait seems a particularly apt motif for exploring the legend of a land-born woman who comes to live happily beneath the ocean with her snake groom, yet never quite loses the pull of her terrestrial birthplace. Eglė, in turn, offers a fitting motif for autoethnographic explorations of the diaspora experience.