Clothing houses the body like a protective shell. It provides visual clues about the wearer, their status, time and place in history. Carapace is a representation of the naturalist and illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian and her daughter Dorothea Graff.

In Jacob Marrel’s portrait painted in 1679, Merian wears a black dress with cut sleeves and a white starched muslin collar. There is nothing soft about the fabric, it appears as stiff and hard as armour. 

In 1699, Merian and her daughter travelled from Amsterdam to Dutch Suriname to study insects in their natural environment. Paradoxically, disembarking in the tropics, the women surely appeared as strange creatures themselves, mimicking what they came to observe, trussed in their ornate European carapaces.

TEXT LUCY STRANGER