9 Sisters (with 12 Legends: Vair Lotion [Soot, Moat; Fight, Fiancé; Bait; Mum, Cut])

9 Sisters is a group of four triptychs which together are over five metres wide and represent a cross between a mural and a series of intimate miniatures. In this monumental work, Kasper Bosmans bundles inspiration drawn from sources including classical mythology, biology and heraldic traditions.

His starting point was a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The nine daughters of King Pierus, known as the Pierides, were convinced that they could sing more beautifully than the Muses themselves. They lost the ensuing singing contest and, as punishment for their hubris, were transformed into magpies – raucous, chattering birds. Bosmans also references another version of the story, in which the sisters were changed into nine different birds so that they could no longer talk to one another. This explains the nine different ducks we see here, each with a large speech balloon extending from its beak. In these balloons hang twelve small Legend paintings which seem to represent their chatter and gossip, potentially in numerous languages.

The Legends are executed in gouache on wood and arranged into four triptychs. Each triptych connects two seemingly disparate narratives, the key points of which are depicted concisely and abstractly. In the triptych on the right (Legend: Vair Lotion (Mum, Cut)), Bosmans links a Surinamese toad who carries her eggs on her back to the medieval belief that hedgehogs collect fruit on their spines. The factual inaccuracy is less important than the symbolic similarity: both animals are carrying something valuable.

The subtitle Vair Lotion refers to the relationship between heraldry and nature, as well as to means of protection and manipulation. On the centre panels, Bosmans has combined a pattern based on medieval squirrel fur (vair) with a stylised depiction of the preen gland – an organ in birds’ bodies that secretes an oily substance which makes their feathers waterproof and bacteria-resistant. In this way, the artist ties together symbolism and biology while using iconography to give the squirrel back his protective function.