One of my reasons for writing this blog is to work through some of the ideas which I have most difficulty with in a public space in the hope that someone might make some suggestions or correct me when I'm wrong, and I'm using these images to help me explain one of my half-formed ideas which I'm currently grappling with.
This idea relates to pupation, and emergence - to lifecycles, and I'm hoping that this blog, and my trip to India will both help me turn this into a fully formed idea.

This is a 12th century woodcarving from Kerala, in the South of India. It is in the British museum. It represents a male dancer, and its surface and particularly its extremeties are weather-damaged, unsurprisingly, since it would have been part of the elaborate exterior decoration of a Keralese temple.
The extemities always suffer the most servere damage; fingers and noses are first to go, along with male gelitalia and any other fine protrusions. These are followed by limbs, and finally heads, and if a sculpture has suffered really severe damage there is likely only to be a torso remaining.


The larvae of insects generally shed their skin (chitinous exoskeleton) several times, growing larger each time (each larval stage is called an instar). After their final instar they shed their skin to reveal the pupa - they discard their limbs and their head - their mouthparts and sensory apparatus, and are helpless. Rather like a torso. And from within this 'torso' the adult will emerge.

The peculierities of the lifecycles of insects vary wildly from species to species, but in all the basics are the same: the larva forms within an egg and hatches into the world with one mission; to eat, and survive. Then they pupate. They must metamorphosize, and survive. Then they emerge. They must mate, and reproduce, and survive long enough to do so, and they may do this several times, and then all that's left to do is die.