Tineola bisselliella Autumn collection

2016
Installation and photography

This work started in 2010 in a serendipitous way. While tidying up my closet I had the feeling that there was something alive inside my wool sweaters and I started to shake them over a white cardboard. I found a few little tiny oval shapes, which I looked at under a microscope. To my surprise, they were chrysalides made by webbing moth caterpillars from the wool of my sweaters. Each cocoon had a different color that matched the one on the sweaters. After this discovery, I started to collect the used chrysalides from the little webbing moths whenever they appeared in my house.

I was not interested in altering the living cycle of the moths: I just collected the cocoons that had gone through a metamorphosis stage and were now empty.

The installation consists of 10 macro photographs of webbing moths chrysalides 22 x 33 cm, 3 tables 20 x 20 x 110 cm, 3 glass bells over each table and one real chrysalis of webbing moth with a magnifying glass disposed inside each glass bell with a data sheet that combines artistic and biological information. One poem accompanying one of the photos separated from the other nine.

The work is widely inspired by natural history exhibitions and tries to combine both languages: biological and artistic. These can be seen especially in the use of the glass bells and in the data sheets, which show information like day and place of collection, scientific and common name next to the construction technique utilized by the caterpillar to create the cocoon and the materials. In this way I present the chrysalis as an object of scientific importance and at the same time the caterpillar as a creative creator and the chrysalis as a made sculpture.