A box cast in lead.

Palm-sized, it asks to be carried about, but it weighs you down. Its heft belies a softness and vulnerability.

It stands in for the hereditary, for heirlooms passed down through generations. And the shadow looks like genes, like some sort of umbilical DNA. A guilty stain that admits too much.

Cast, it becomes a generation of itself, reproduced and re-created with failings each time.

The clasp suggests that it is locked, that it contains secrets, something shameful or precious.

Sealed shut, coffin like, it talks about containment, concealment, secrecy, repression and not being able to forget.

It sits as a relic: a fetish of family life.