The Escaping Chameleon

Story of the Escaping Chameleon belongs to the Stories series — and it is perhaps the most personally resonant work in the collection.

The chameleon has always fascinated me. Its capacity to change colour, to blend into its surroundings, to become invisible when necessary: this is not just survival. It is a form of intelligence, of sensitivity, of constant reading of the environment. It is also something I know from the inside: the art of adapting to a new country, a new family, a new self. Of learning, quietly, how to belong.

The figurine - vivid in teal, orange and green - sits at the edge of a deep blue resin surface, inside a vintage Bohemian crystal dish whose flower-shaped form and intricate engraved patterns shimmer beneath the resin. A trail of small beads winds across the surface like waves afer a hurricane. The chameleon is at the rim. It is escaping. Or trying to.

But here is the sadness of this particular story: the chameleon's extraordinary gift - its ability to adapt - cannot protect it from the destruction of its habitat. These animals, found predominantly in Madagascar, are acutely sensitive to temperature change. When their environment shifts too quickly, no amount of camouflage can save them. There is nowhere left to blend into.

And this is where the personal and the planetary converge. The chameleon runs, as we all might want to run. But there is no other planet. There is only this one, and it is our home.

Story of the Escaping Chameleon is about adaptation pushed past its limits, and the particular grief of a survival skill that is no longer enough.