Deer Logic (2025)

In Deer Logic, Cox examines the instinctive stillness of fear — the moment when the body, faced with threat, chooses not to fight or flee but to freeze. The figure, crouched and lit by a faint, divine glow, raises antlers to her head in a futile act of identification: if she becomes the deer, perhaps she will understand its survival. Or perhaps she will learn how to surrender.

The red mark on her forehead becomes both a target and a symbol of awareness — the split-second of recognition before impact. Light isolates her against a void of darkness, rendering her a study in helpless grace.

Cox uses the deer as a psychological mirror rather than a mythic emblem. The work suggests that to “become” the deer is to inhabit the logic of stillness — that trembling state where reason collapses and instinct governs. Through this self-portrait of paralysis, Deer Logic explores the fragile mechanics of survival and the thin line between adaptation and self-erasure.