Epicedio, song to a warrior dead in combat, 1994 
Three of twelve hand-sculpted Carrara marble slabs, 
each 17 × 17 × 1.2 in.

While photographing animal tracks in the sand and along the riverbanks of the Amazon, I remembered a marble stone with the sacred footprints of Jesus that I saw in Rome’s Domine Quo Vadis church during a trip in 1991. Back in Caracas, at the paleobiology lab of Simón Bolívar University, I identified the species most at risk of extinction. I selected twelve prints—referencing the twelve apostles of the Last Supper—and carved them in marble.