"Kai-Kai's Moon"

In the Indigenous Chilean Mapuche cosmology, it is told that at the beginning of time, before the world had taken form, two great serpents moved through the unmanifested cosmos: Kai-Kai and Tren-Tren. Between them arose a singing dispute, a contest of songs that would shape all of creation. Kai-Kai raised her voice and called forth the waters, and from her song poured the oceans, the rivers and streams, the lakes, the springs, and the glaciers. Then Tren-Tren answered with his own song, lifting the soil from beneath the waters, drawing up the mountains and the dry land so that living beings might find a home upon the earth. In this painting, that ancient duet still echoes, the serpents forever singing the world into being beneath the watchful eye of the moon.