The ethnographer Arnold van Gennep, in The Rites of Passage, regards “regeneration as a law of life and of the universe: the energy found in any system gradually becomes spent and must be renewed at intervals.” The bones — a giraffe hip bone and a hippo jaw — were donated by Kruger National Park rangers from animals that died of natural causes, and combined with bandages, yarns and drawings on silk. Some of the Bones and Roots drawings were transferred onto that silk, carrying the earlier studies directly into the work.