Untitled (Sea Anemone) is one of Maren Hassinger’s signature floor and wall-bound sculptures made out of twisted and intertwined wire rope; these works typically reflect forms found in nature. (On Dangerous Ground—Hassinger’s 1981 show at LACMA, the museum’s first solo exhibition devoted to a Black artist—referenced bushes or shrubs.) According to the artist, the twisted wire relates to the umbilical cord, something shared by all mammals. In a 2018 interview, she described seeing her newborn daughter’s umbilical cord many years prior: “It had a twist and inside the twist were all the veins, etcetera, feeding the baby; but it was covered by a membrane, and it looked just like a wire rope. It was even gray like galvanized wire rope. Then I realized I was doing the right thing [by using wire rope in my art]. Even now I think about that, all mammals have that experience of that umbilical cord. It’s a twist; it’s a twist! It looks like a twist.”

Already in the early 1970s Hassinger was aware of and sensitive to environmental concerns, which have grown exponentially in the intervening decades. Untitled (Sea Anemone) simultaneously suggests the delicate beauty of the sea anemone and alludes to both its predatory nature (when touched, its tentacles fire a harpoon-like filament into the victim to inject a paralyzing neurotoxin) and the precariousness of its existence in coastal tropical waters now threatened by warming ocean temperatures and chemical runoff from industry and farming. Visually delicate and frilly, Untitled at the same time is made from a strong and tough material.