Chiron V

2025

Archery bow, horse hide, oil and encaustic on Arches paper, wire

132 x 136 x 7 cm / 52 x 53½ x 2¾ in

In Greek Orthodox practice, tamata are small silver anatomical offerings, hands, eyes, hearts, hung at healing shrines as acts of petition or gratitude. They accumulate around the sacred image in multiples, each one a separate body, a separate plea. This work follows that logic.

Chiron is the centaur of Greek myth who trained Asclepius in medicine and Achilles in the arts, yet could not heal his own wound. Jung returned to this figure repeatedly as an image of the analyst: someone whose capacity to heal others is inseparable from the wound they carry. The knowledge is not despite the injury. It comes through it.

Cheir, the Greek root of Chiron’s name, means hand. The hand that touches, diagnoses, repairs. Vagioni’s sustained inquiry into embodied healing practices informs how she understands the palm: not as passive form but as a living instrument of transmission. Here that instrument is multiplied, offered, suspended, and left deliberately unresolved between the human and the animal.

The bow holds the tension. It does not release it.