A room-scale ‘seabed’ built entirely from repurposed post-consumer materials — felted, hand-woven and eco-dyed fibre interbred with PET plastic.

It is an ironic comment on genetic adaptation under plastic pollution. As Professor Thorsten Reusch, of the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity in Münster, has shown (2013), marine pollution can drive genomic drift — phenotypic mutations in subcellular systems — reducing biodiversity and threatening the extinction of species. Here the artist’s hand performs that mutation, interbreeding organic hand-woven and felted fibres with industrially-processed PET plastics.

This is one of two biodegradable textile-collage seabeds de Villiers made; the other was for Aquatic Insurrection. Litany was shown only once, at the Mokgalakwena Gallery, Cape Town, curated by Elbé Coetzee, in 2015.