Shells
Philippines 2025. Chased and Repoussé
Spiral upon spiral, the shell sketches its own cosmos: a logarithm carved in limestone, a living equation in which each whorl reaches toward infinity without ever closing the circle. From this age‑old motif—both mathematical formula and organic heartbeat—Tzu draws the grammar of Shells.
Steeped since childhood in the Chinese character 寶貝 bǎobèi (“treasure”), literally “precious‑shell,” whose radical 貝 echoes ancient currencies, the artist celebrates the intimate worth of the infinitesimal: the shimmer of nacre, the tremor of a chipped rim, the mineral softness of a sheltered interior.
The Philippine archipelago—a constellation of more than 7,000 islands—cradles the genesis of this first collection: a liminal realm where the sea polishes every fragment and the sun sculpts the shadows. Here emerged the founding scallop shell, an homage to a pilgrim friend bound for Compostela, at once a traveler’s totem and a promise of return.
Shells converses with art history: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the goddess carried ashore on her shell like Tzu herself, who became a mother last year; the Flemish vanitas, reminding us that a carapace is only the memory of a life dispersed; and fractal growth, an ode to a future unfolding.
To wear these pieces is to press a petrified fragment of ocean against the skin—memento mori and talisman of hope in one—the lingering breath of an ancient world rendered in contemporary luxury.