Earth Ængel | The Dolphin Denouement

use of narrative and heat-related mixed-media, Earth Ængel creates hybrid forms that splash and play in the preverbal waters of gender. These dolphin-like glass and metal sculptures are indeterminate, transspecies creatures, and the main characters of Earth Ængel’s years-long allegorical exploration of becoming. Denouement means an untying; a story must unravel before it can reach its resolution. After repeated appearances in exhibitions since 2019, The Dolphin Denouement is the latest chapter of their story. Earth Ængel’s first iteration of this project debuted at Goldsmiths University in 2019. It told the story of an artist who transformed into a dolphin and realized they were trapped inside an aquatic circus where they were expected to perform gender constructs for the empire. The pod grew in number in the 2021 exhibition entitled SAGA, curated by Jeannette Gunnarsson, where they achieved self-actualization and found others who were experiencing the same transformation. This witnessing of their becoming broke The Dolphins’ chains to the empire, but they were still in the depths of the circus, planning their big exit. At last, the story of The Dolphins has reached a culminating chapter, and they have become The Dolphin Denouement. A family free of their binds, The Dolphins’ bodies are adorned with painted pine wings that allude to their circuitous story. Their embodiment is articulated through materials that twist and leap in a choreography of liberation. A multi-faced sun made of pine rosin and twisted coyote willow beckons on the horizon, a much-welcomed vanishing point for The Dolphins, whose struggles with conformity have at last abated. After years swimming towards freedom, The Dolphin Denouement has finally reached a new uncharted horizon.