The Visitors
Centrifug, Konsthall C, Stockholm, 2020
The Visitors
9–11 October 2020, Centrifug, Konsthall C
The Visitors is an installation consisting of a studio lamp, three test tubes filled with watercolor and fifty sculptures based on the endangered Monarch butterfly, which belongs to the brush-footed butterfly family. The species is occasionally found in Sweden. In their overwintering areas in Florida and Mexico, thousands of butterflies gather in one and the same tree.
It has turned out that science knows very little about their migration patterns and how, year after year, they find their way back to their overwintering areas.
In an experiment, a scientist modified the wing pattern of a group of brush-footed butterflies by adding or painting out the dots. This had unexpected consequences for the male’s ability to survive and attract a female.
During the artistic process, a great many aesthetic decisions are made. Can aesthetic purposes be reconciled with scientific research processes? The butterflies are painted in watercolor on paper and then dipped in hot wax. With a scalpel, the details of the body and wings are brought out. Finally, I paint the butterflies with pigment and shellac. The white dots that are characteristic of the Monarch’s wing pattern were removed because they did not fit my artistic interpretation. On an aesthetic level, my working process increasingly came to resemble science’s manipulation of the living.