The text is excerpted from Ezekiel 29:3-5, which reads: “Thus said the Lord G!d: I am going to deal with you, O Pharaoh king of Egypt, Mighty crocodile, sprawling in your channels, who said, my Nile is my own; I made it for myself. I will put hooks in your jaws, And make the fish of your channels cling to your scales; I will haul you up from your channels, with all the fish of your channels clinging to your scales. And I will fling you into the desert, with all the fish of your channels. You shall be left lying in the open, ungathered and unburied.”

When I read this text a few years ago, I was struck by the visceral rage and powerful fury being expressed. These feelings echo what I personally experience when people in power are behaving like monsters, and I wish someone had the ability to haul them out of their Niles as well.

In my preparations for creating this as a papercut, given the thin elements of the letters, I decided to try using a thin cardboard instead of regular paper. Boy, oh boy, was it truly frustrating to work with. This took probably four times as long to cut because of the challenges of cutting through the cardboard, especially at every corner where two different directioned cuts would meet. And it was harder on my hands and on the blades. AND it still wanted to tear! I’m not interested in every using this material again.