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2024
Acrylic and pastels on canvas
28″ H × 22″ W

Created for Aistė Rye’s solo exhibition The Stuff of Planets and Stars at Bhina Wolf Atelier in Seattle, Beating Heart of the Crab is inspired by the artist’s astrological sun sign in Cancer (the crab) and the Crab Nebula, a collapsed, dead core of a massive star that exploded in a supernova observed by Chinese astronomers in 1054 CE.

Aistė’s body of work in The Stuff of Planets and Stars explores the cosmos as a place of ancestry and transformation. The death of her great-grandmother, Adelė, the matriarch in my Lithuanian family,  inspired Aistė to honor her spirit in the stars, imagining her among the reincarnate cosmic matter that births and reclaims life across space and time. Each painting serves as a memory and a connection—a spiritual mapping that links Aistė to her Lithuanian roots near the Baltic Sea and reminds her that life, in its many forms, is woven from the same celestial dust to which we return. These works represent a certain ego death, a journey through remembrance and presence, and a call to look both outward to the great unknown and inward to strengthen Aistė’s connection with her ancestors.

Details

• Original painting

• Acrylic and pastels on canvas

• 28″ H × 22″ W

• Created in 2024

• Exhibited in The Stuff of Planets and Stars at Bhina Wolf Atelier, Seattle