Death and Desire focuses on neo-baroque exuberance, adornment and masquerade, commenting on the fear, anticipation and mystery of the body. We live in a society that dreads age and death and propagates a culture of youth and beauty.

The work alludes to the Norse myth of the Valkyrie — an ambiguous, shape-shifting female warrior goddess who determines the fate of soldiers and accompanies the dead to Valhalla, riding a pack of wolves. Sensual desire, the life impulse, is juxtaposed with the negotiation of death’s immanence.

Its Valkyrie boots were made by studying the craftsmanship of medieval knights’ armour in UK museums — the brass cut with a jigsaw from cardboard templates, and the resin stilettos cast in silicone moulds taken from earlier works, in de Villiers’ first attempt at ombré, graded colour.