Conclusion

Summary

Abstract

As shells are integral to early modern reflections on the relations between human and non-human realms, thinking with and through ocean objects, their sensual appeal as well as their intrinsic ‘otherness’, teaches us about the shaping of aesthetics and ecologies of matter in imperial centres and their peripheries. The study of shell artefacts brings to the fore patterns of transcultural objectification in the early modern desire to collect and possess foreign nature and, by extension, foreign peoples across Eurasia. Adding references to selected modern artworks, the conclusion highlights how shells offer analogies between the appropriation of objects and the conquest of foreign peoples during the early modern period, a process in which material, sexual and political aspects are closely entangled.

Keywords: Shells, ecology, collecting, Eurasia, postcolonial studies, materiality, Gender

Looking at a modern image of a woman with a shell, Francesca Woodman's (1958–1981) Untitled of 1979–1980, we notice three shells: a real one, a woman's hairstyle arranged in the shape of a conch and a shell-shaped cloud. (Fig. 5.1) The image is one of Woodman's many enigmatic self-portraits. It shows the artist with her eyes closed and her head resting on her hands as if sleeping or daydreaming. Similar to the visual correlations between the three shells – the real one, the one made of hair and the cloud shapes – are the links between the decoration on the artist's sleeve and the maritime objects in the display case underneath her arm: they, too, seem to mirror each other's shapes. Woodman rests her head on a glass panel whose transparent surface and the marine objects it shields and supports evoke associations with water. Her hands are reflected in it, evoking the impression of a shore that connects her head to the “underwater world” contained by the display case. Supported by a “coast” formed of her hands, the shell shape of the artist's head indicates that we are looking at the self-portrait of a woman as a mollusc. Or, more specifically, a self-portrait of a woman's dream of being a mollusc.