Toxicity moves from mercury as chemical toxicant affecting nervous system of humans to the toxicity of (implicit) waves of colonization/imperialism with their imported gendered systems of manliness and capitalist extraction. The matador-bull fight art form/ritual is juxtaposed in the essay, implicitly, to the art form (center of gratuitous expenditure) that is (Swiss designed) remediation science.
Eye goes from lower right (with the bottle) to the horizon, aka the muddy water. The critical essay pulls me back to the specifics of the bottle's illustration, in (deliberate?) parallel to the way the sequence of the first image--It's Elemental--to the second image--Matador--also moves focus from the global to the local field site.
Less the image and more the critical commentary interpellated me as a woman/feminist: the details re the gendered division of labor in Madre Del Dios into miners and sex workers was artfully drawn out vis-a-vis the imagery on the bottle. The image itself first hailed me as a drinker of beverages from bottles; only the critical commentary helped hail me as a thinker on topics re (metal/mercury) toxicity's re sexualization/eroticism of mortal danger and risk and the relation to gendered labor forms in the region.
Curious to know more