During my six-week residency at Rimbun Dahan in Selangor, Malaysia, I used the holometabolous insect’s life cycle, such as moths and butterflies, as a starting point to investigate the physical and emotional being and their means of transmutation and change.
These distinct stages of life represent a total (holo) change, in form and being.
Taking formal cues from the egg, caterpillar, pupa and winged adult, the pieces are created from materials that symbolize both protection and fragility simultaneously: granite, terracotta roof tiles, stained glass and ceramic tile, and eggshells.
The visual langluage of materias and techniques connects to the Kuala Lumpur streetscape of cracked and mosaic tile, and roofing tiles not common in North America. The eggshell is applied with inspiration of the Ancient Vietnamese and Chinese art of eggshell-inlay, which has now been practiced throughout Asia and later in Europe during the Art-Deco period.
These works unpack the paradoxical nature of the physical and emotional being and their means of transmutation or change. If you ask someone the questions; Are we as humans able to undergo partial or total change? In what ways does this happen and what remains of our original selves?
