"Blue Iniquity"

Sculpture

Whale sculpture by artist Wick Ahrens. Polychrome painted, carved, bass wood sculpture (A) of the body of a dead, blue whale lying on its back with mouth slightly open. Whale's fluke is is signed by the artist and dated 1997. Piece of line with hook attached (B) was wound around the whale's tail in its original installation, and a red platform (C) representing a pool of blood was arranged below the whale. The piece formerly sat on a sloping base (now discarded).

According to Ahrens: "A quote from renowned whale scientist and author Roger Payne inspired this latest work. I was deeply moved by this narrative, and knew that I had to say something about the terrible injustice we have done to whales and ultimately to ourselves. The sadness of this piece becomes enmeshed in its abstractness." The Payne quote to which Ahrens refers is below.

"I once saw a black-and-white snapshot taken by the whalers who caught the largest blue whale ever known. That snapshot is the only known photograph of the largest-known individual of the most mammoth species of animal ever to live on earth---which means the largest animal for which we have evidence anywhere in the universe. This female blue whale was killed in the Antarctic in February of 1928. The contemporary description of what turned out to be humanity's encounter with the largest animal ever known to have existed only gives the whale's sex, length, and the day and place she was killed.

So there you have it, the sum total of all information passed along to us in the eye-witness account by one of the handful of people who saw the biggest animal that any human since the dawn of time has ever laid eyes on; in fact the biggest of which our own species has ever been aware." --Roger Payne, "Among Whales" 1995