Acrylic and oil on linen
120 × 90 cm

The harpy eagle is one of the largest and most powerful raptors on Earth, and one of Panama’s national symbols. Most people know it from schoolbooks, passports, and sports uniforms, but few will ever see one in the wild. Painted at approximately life size, it confronts the viewer less as an emblem than as a physical presence. Its immense weight and predatory force are set against the delicate phalaenopsis orchids, whose genus name means “butterfly-like.” Here, the eagle stands on a supermarket tray of grouper. Fish and butterflies. According to a popular folk etymology, the country’s name means “an abundance of fish and butterflies”.

The fish market in my hometown was built with Japanese support. Probably the best place in the whole country to get freshl ceviche. Yeara later, while walking through Yokohamabashi market, I kept thinking of it. Ceviche had become sashimi, but the logic of the place felt remarkably familiar.

The orchids arrive in Yokohama as they arrive everywhere: wrapped, commodified, and sold by the stem. Markets occupy a curious space. They transform living beings into products, yet they are also places where histories converge, cultures intermingle, and distant places unexpectedly begin to resemble one another.