KING COBRA’s When You Are Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is her most significant and monumental work to date. Suspended within a 13-foot cage of fluorescent tubes, a bisected male Great White shark—constructed from silicone, beads, synthetic hair, and ink applied with a tattoo machine—appears to hover between life and decay. With razor blade teeth, its diseased skin glistens with wounds but is also studded with sparkling gems, a fusion of the grotesque and the beautiful. COBRA further transforms the environment with audio and red lighting, creating a strangely charged space that harkens more to blood than to blue water.

This artwork reflects on Black lives lost during the Middle Passage, when enslaved Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to North and South America. Ship captains would threaten to throw slaves overboard into shark-infested waters as a way to enforce fear, ensure submission, and limit revolts. Caught, caged, and dissected, COBRA’s diseased shark has a body in its bowels, reminding us of this traumatic history. It serves as a terrifying memorial to those who made the impossible choice of sea over shackles, along with those forced into slavery and those who carry their stories and memories forward.