Baton – Serpent

Huang Yong Ping has shown the aluminum snake in various sizes and places, including the Mühlenbrücke bridge in Hann Mündenin, Germany (2000); the Watermall at Queensland Art Gallery (2012); the estuary of the Loire in Nantes Saint-Nazaire (2012); and in Paderborn, Germany (2013). With its long vertebrae and silvery ribs, this Jurassic animal stretches out for about forty meters, undulating from ceiling to floor and metaphorically linking the sky to the earth. The coiled snake or dragon has been a key figure in Chinese mythology since ancient times. Traditionally associated with water, knowledge and wisdom, it is sometimes also a symbol of fear, creation, desire, deception or good luck. A key symbol in many cultures, the serpent appears in the Garden of Eden, as Naga in Southeast Asia, as the enemy of Beowulf and Saint George in Anglo-Saxon mythology, and also as the Rainbow Serpent in Aboriginal Australian culture. Bâton, the French word for “staff”, is a double allusion: it refers both to the snake’s tail and to a passage in the Old Testament book of Exodus, in which God performs a miracle by turning a rod into a serpent and then, when Moses puts out his hand and takes it, turning it back into a rod.