TOTEM — The Gate (bonus piece — my main entry is here 👇)

Main submission TOTEM: https://contra.com/community/Y6nZXmUy-totem-flora-museum-challenge-submission — that's the one to upvote for the challenge.

This piece is a side visual from the same project TOTEM.

Traditionally, welcome poles stood at the edge of a Northwest Coast village to greet visitors, and every totem pole carried a clan's lineage and history in its carved figures — a record of memory, not an idol.

In TOTEM, three separate pole models — Tlingit (1820–40, wood), Haida (1875–85, wood, pigment), and one carved in argillite around 1890 by Charles Edenshaw — are reimagined not as three separate standing poles, but fused into a single arch at the shrine's threshold, keeping that same essence: they carry clan memory and greet whoever arrives.

One gate instead of three poles, reforged in metal instead of wood and stone.

The Met's own records don't specify what each carved figure on these three poles depicts, so the imagery in TOTEM's version is my own extrapolation — grounded in the real, documented purpose of welcome poles and clan-crest carving, not a literal reading of these specific figures.

Model poles like these first appeared in the Pacific Northwest in the 1860s, once full-sized totem poles were no longer being carved at the same scale — smaller versions became the way carvers, including Edenshaw, kept the same imagery and tradition alive for the next generation. In the post-collapse world of TOTEM, that same tradition is deliberately amplified: several poles are merged into a single arch, scaled up to a monumental size, and carved in a far more durable material — metal instead of wood and stone — so that it reminds everyone who passes through of the history of the lineage it carries.

Totem Pole Model — Tlingit, 1820–40 — wood https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319073

Totem Pole Model — Haida, 1875–85 — wood, pigment https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319081

Totem Pole Model — Charles Edenshaw, ca. 1890 — argillite (carved stone) https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319092

FLORA project: https://app.flora.ai/join-project/dd0f3ef8-da87-4ca9-aa23-1ebe54a56d65

👉 Full story TOTEM: https://contra.com/community/Y6nZXmUy-totem-flora-museum-challenge-submission

#floramuseumchallenge #flora #metmuseum #generativedesign #FLORAMuseum