Zie Sowden

“The cocoon is as much a vessel of decay as the human body, life cycles mirrored within a shorter time frame. Our human life cycle could be hundreds of cocoon cycles, yet we mirror and replicate and learn from these short-lived experiences, created by that of the metamorphosising creatures, wrapped and safely threaded within its silken embrace. Decay is witnessed, processed, empathised with, pathologically pre-empted and deeply understood within bodily and mental processes.

Grief and mourning are actions that are frequently seen within this state of decay throughout life cycles, especially that of the feminine. A state of mourning can be both temporary and permanent within the feminine existence; the death of childhood (felt deeply especially by those that menstruate, a firm marker put in place between child//adolescent//adult), reproductive factors (the literal deaths faced with abortion and miscarriages, for instance, but the mourning, death of potential, death of the feminine, before this event, but also the birth of what comes next) and the decay of the body through the process of ageing, for which the feminine is frequently persecuted for, admired for (if they’re ‘doing it gracefully’), demonised for (if, for instance, they’re getting the help of the artificial (plastic surgery)), and forgotten about completely, rendered invisible by the wider society.”

Quote from my dissertation: “Exploring the Symbiotic Co-Existence Between the Life Cycle of the Bombyx Mori and Ovadecaeir: Feminine Decay and the Art of Cocooning.