hic, Beasts on the main stairwell landing

Designed and make you turn your head to get a closer look are these grotesque hairy "heads" suspended in the Hart House main stairwell. Not surprisingly, it is the work of Catherine Heard, one of my favourite artists. The installation, called Beasts, could have different and sometimes startling interpretations. Personally I saw histories - the bloody scenes of ancient war where the captives or the deads were beheaded, bundled together and hung on the winning side's city walls as symbols of victory. To the artist it has a totally different symbolic function - it reveals the "primal vestiges of the human mind, suppressed by the cultured and educated aspects of our psychologies". This is really the beauty of the work which can be interpreted in different levels. It's a contemporary chandelier in the Hart House illuminating the other side of beauty.