Mo Ganji: Radiated Tortoise | Strahlenschildkröte | Astrochelys radiata | No. 173/250 from work group 8/99

Mo Ganji distills the radiated tortoise — a large terrestrial reptile native to the dry spiny forests and scrublands of southern Madagascar — through the discipline of the single line, allowing the core of presence to emerge by subtraction. The unbroken line withdraws from ornament and pattern, holding the being as a quiet coherence rather than an emblem. In this reduction, the line does not claim the tortoise alone; it remains open, acknowledging that what is seen is a provisional naming of something more essential.

Astrochelys radiata is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. Once widespread across southern Madagascar, the species has undergone severe population declines in recent decades. Despite its cultural significance in parts of Madagascar, wild numbers have collapsed, and remaining populations are highly fragmented.

The principal threats include intensive illegal collection for the pet trade and local consumption, habitat loss from land conversion and charcoal production, and the species’ slow reproductive rate. Because radiated tortoises mature late and produce few offspring, losses are not easily replaced. Even protected areas have not fully shielded populations from exploitation.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the tortoise can be encountered beyond geometry or endurance. It allows attention to rest on a life shaped by time and restraint, suggesting how long-lived continuity can be undone rapidly when repetition gives way to extraction, and how disappearance often begins not with force, but with the steady erosion of limits.