Mantis draws on the insect’s iconic stance—alert, slightly uncanny—while filtering it through the artist’s plant-informed vocabulary of lobed, leaflike forms and perforated silhouettes. Its masklike face and frilled body give it the air of a desert deity or protective spirit, suggesting a creature evolved through camouflage and ritual alike. The work feels poised between menace and reverence, capturing the mantis as both predator and mystic figure in the larger ecosystem.