Fox at the Cerilia, 2012

During the Cerilia, ludi in honor of Ceres, roman goddess of the fields' fertility, an old-fashioned, cruel and disconcerting ritual was performed, and which only Ovid makes us learn about, in the Fasti : priests would let go of preparatorily torched foxes.
This ancient performance still puzzles and intrigues historians nowadays. Nevertheless do they agree on the fact it should not be seen as a sacrifice to Ceres, rather as a magical, religous ritual which would exercise a purifying and fertilizing effect to crops.
This fox's hide is an early 20th century stole. Being essential fashioned accessories at the time, these stoles, unlike other luxury items, have totally lost their monetary value now. Proof of this is that I buy them for 10 euros at the Emmaus center.
The fox's skull comes from the site where I usually get my animal bones – a gulch at which poachers thought they could forever throw their cruel and gratuitous misdeeds, based on folklore having fox as a pest.
Here, the golden bough, which let Aeneas go and leave the underworld alive in the Aeneid, stigmatize the trajectory of the small bullet that killed him.