Wrath is the sin of ungoverned anger: a consuming force of rage, hatred, vengeance, and the desire to destroy. Unlike momentary anger, wrath is anger that has become an identity—an emotion no longer felt, but inhabited.
This work reduces the skull to a field of uncompromising red, the colour of blood, danger, and conflict, but also the colour of Mars, the Roman god of war, whose name remains synonymous with aggression and violence. The skull itself becomes both battlefield and combatant, a vessel overwhelmed by its own fury.
At its centre stare a pair of mandrill eyes. The mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx), the largest species of monkey, is renowned for its extraordinary facial colouring, immense physical strength and highly complex social structures. Living in vast troops that can number hundreds of individuals, mandrills navigate intricate hierarchies, alliances, rivalries and displays of dominance. Their societies are not so distant from our own as we might like to imagine.
Yet despite their animal origin, these eyes appear unsettlingly human. Their gaze confronts the viewer with an uncomfortable question: how far removed are we from the creatures from which we evolved? The emotions that drive wrath—territoriality, status, jealousy, dominance, revenge—are not uniquely human impulses but ancient instincts shared across the animal kingdom.
The work explores the fragile boundary between civilisation and animality. Wrath is often framed as a moral failing, but here it is presented as something older and more primal. The mandrill's stare becomes a mirror in which the viewer sees both beast and self reflected simultaneously.
The skull is not simply angry; it is stripped back to a more ancient state of being, where reason has surrendered to instinct and culture has fallen away. The question that remains is deliberately unresolved: when confronted by rage, who is the beast? The animal staring back from the skull, or the human who recognises themselves in its eyes?