Pulpa Mordida, Carne Fecunda is a Flora Aura painting, abstracted and withdrawn from Thomas Eakins' Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) 1875, wherein a white, stately figure is dramatically operating on a grotesque victim in front of an audience of onlookers within a darkened panopticon surgical theatre.

Translating the grotesque history of Thomas Jefferson University's surgical theatre, the work offers a macabre abstraction of the institutional practice of using formerly enslaved cadavers for medical instruction. Neon and flesh tones vibrate across a textured surface painting. Scabs of neon pink flesh billow from a bulbous jack fruit cast out of domestic construction materials, adhered with vibrant layers of interior latex paint onto domestic upholstery textiles. Organ-like spiking skin casts coffee colored shadows onto a woven beige surface, stretched across the painting's frame. Strapping onto the upper member is a sagging set of disemboweled jack fruit, huddling a hammock into the painting's lower corner.

Flora Aura cast landscape paintings considers fertility culture across reproductive and climate crisis in the Americas: a complicated historical, political, and geographic context wherein conquering the tropical landscape and diasporic women’s bodies stem from a colonial Eurocentric legacy.

The painting is part of an immersive installation of Coralina Rodriguez Meyer solo show at Thomas Jefferson University Helix Gallery Iris Crepusculas y Pupilas Madrugadas on view November 15 - December 13 2024.

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)
1875 Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/299524