Points of Contact is an interdisciplinary project that focuses on the detrimental impact of insect extermination culture. This body of work challenges social biases against insects, traversing the boundaries between human and inhuman, inverting interior and exterior, transposing soft and rigid. The work explores visceral connections between insects and humans, illustrating interspecies codependency via cast iron and bronze forms.
The exhibition features a series of sculptural abstractions of insect and human anatomy that have been forcefully exposed to a variety of chemicals commonly used as pesticides. Through skeletal fragments, contorted nervous systems, and oxide exposures the installation repositions insects and steps beyond collective histories of interspecies friction. Bio-surrealism becomes a lens of speculative kinship and bodies are transformed from sites of friction to systems of interdependence and joint suffering.
My thesis paper investigates how the history of mining and metallurgy is connected to the normalization of exploiting nature, how the industrial revolution and rise of agriculture has shifted our relationship to insects and nature, and how reconnecting with insects can help resituate our identities as a part of ecological networks.