TOTEM — FLORA Museum Challenge

TOTEM — FLORA Museum Challenge submission

The Challenge: take one real, public-domain object from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and reimagine it into a new world, using FLORA.

My key artifact: a 19th-century rattle by the Xaadas (Haida) people, from Masset, Haida Gwaii. The Met describes it directly: "This raven rattle depicts a perched bird with wings outstretched toward its front — an unusual representation of the raven on a rattle, more typical of the way it would be depicted on a memorial (or totem) pole."

For the Haida, Raven isn't just a myth character — it's one of the two clan divisions their entire society was built on (Raven and Eagle, inherited through the mother's line), and a rattle like this was carried by a chief during ceremonial dances as a mark of rank. Beyond Haida Gwaii, Raven keeps reappearing in the same role across the Pacific Northwest as a creator and trickster figure, and even in Norse mythology as Huginn and Muninn — Odin's ravens, Thought and Memory. Almost everywhere it shows up, it carries the same charge: intelligence, transformation, the thing that adapts and endures.

All six artifacts used in TOTEM:

Primary artifact: Rattle (Raven) — Xaadas (Haida), 19th century — wood, pigment https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/501263

Supporting artifacts, used as visual texture to enrich the world:

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

Ceremonial Board (Malu) — Sawos people, 19th century — wood https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/311159

Grere'o (Shield) — Solomon Islands, 19th century — fiber, shell, nut paste https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/310073

Four different original materials — wood, stone, shell, and fiber — all reforged into one material in TOTEM: metal, the last thing standing once everything organic is gone.

Silhouette preserved. Material is not.

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

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