During my childhood, my parents were brave enough to take annual family ski trips to Vermont. While these events were typically just shy of disastrous–most Cubans don’t do too well in the cold–I’ve never forgotten the panorama of animal heads in the lodge’s dining room. Though I typically find such displays repugnant (having lived in Colorado now for 10+ years, I’ve seen more than my share), there was something about the high walls, the room’s dim light, the lively shadows thrown on the walls that made an impression on my fledgling imagination.

Origami’s Hunter. Designed by Si Studio.

Of course, now that I’ve seen bighorn sheep alive and well in the Rocky Mountains, I don’t think I’d feel the same about the old Eastern Ski Lodge. Thankfully, designer Verónica Posada of Santiago’s (that’s Chile, not Spain) Si Studio has re-imagined the concept with Origami’s Hunter, a series of wall sconces/lamps that inverts the vanity of trophy hunting into fully-realized, captivating depictions of animal heads made from paper.

The change is refreshing because, let’s face it, the heads-on-the-wall theme has worn rather thin. Posada’s lamps come in three incarnations: a bighorn ram, a two-point buck, and a rather diminutive rhinoceros (if we trust the scale of comparison between the other two). Forgiving, for a moment, the somewhat jarring juxtaposition of North American mammals and African ones, the sconces are quite striking. In the manner of good art, they represent without imitating. Given the constraints of the medium, Posada’s heads are necessarily overtly geometric. But just because rounded contours are absent doesn’t mean the pieces don’t accurately convey the essence of the represented animals–which they do, indeed. Just as Cubist art expands our notion of what is real, so too with Posada’s Origami’s Hunter. In fact, for me, these striking sconces trump reality, supplanting the ostentation of dead “trophies” with engaging, illuminated depictions of living, breathing, beautiful beasts.