School of thousand insects, Installation, 2023

To arrive from the temporary location of the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl at the school premises in the north of the city to the city center and from the center to the museum the public transport takes a big turn to the north, making the distance several times bigger in order to pass through the Chemical Park Marl, one of the largest chemical production facilities in Europe. The fascination of modernization with efficiency of systems and networks strikingly blurs the assumed notion of irrationality in this instance of drawing a map that is shaped by industrialization and productivity.

One of the projects of modernity has been the industrialization of agriculture and the expansion of monocultures. In these new landscapes certain insects have turned into pests that are bringing damage to crops and need to be exterminated, which was massively carried out during last decades through the use of chemical production.

I trace the insects through their history and in streets, parks, and pathways. I explore the ways people related to them, the knowledge that was being produced around them, the different methods of pest control and persecutions of insects parallel to witches in Europe. I try to look at the landscapes as traces of relations with the world, both in past and present. Inspired by the practice from the late 17th and early 18th centuries of making prophecies from insect wings, I think of mapping worlds and urban environments otherwise.

Through the work I question the modernist idea of rigid separation between art making, photography, museums and natural sciences, and examine their complex relations. I follow the monster production machines and trace past ways of life, imaginings and stories that haunt the places, knowledge and memories to create encounters for the present through weaving together natural history and storytelling practices.