Meltem
I've always admired art that mixes up with scientific elements, it gives
people a wider view on the evolution we live in today and a more vast
knowledge in art. This time there's going to be both of that and the
disasters we have made on this humble planet.
We live on a delicate planet and as we know it, we fucked it up. I
don't say that so you feel guilty, but on the other hand we're all
disgraced beings. As we all know mostly of the nuclear waste goes
underground or when it hits the ground the vegetation becomes
contaminated and mostly the insects are the good targets for
that. As we all know there were many nuclear disasters and still it
can happen before our eyes. The earliest was in the 50s, in Canada,
when the reactor core was damaged. In the following years, many more
nuclear “accidents” occurred. Like Ishikawa, Chernobyl,
Fukushima, Prypiat, Hamm-Uentrop, Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux, etc.
Now, if we all think about the beauties that nature can give us and
all that beauty is disturbed by a flow of chemical fluid. How would
that look like? What's the cause of this chemical reaction or
deformation on the body? How can little things handle that massive
chemical fluid. In Chernobyl some animals are used to the amount of
radioactivity and has no mutation in their body.
“Invertebrates
(especially insects) make up the foundation of our ecosystems, a
fantastical thing for me to gain perspective in my life. In fact,
their worlds and ancient timelines are so extensive and beyond our
comprehension.”.
These are the words of Joianna Bitlle, she once said this on her tumblr.
Joianna Bittle
(born 1975), lives and works in New York City. She exhibited many of
her works in museums like Marfa,
TX at Eugene Binder Gallery, Wave Hill in the Bronx, MoMa, etc.
In
her 'A Royal Family' series,
she depict exotic beetles from around the world. She paints these
astonishing species in large canvasses (on a human scale), in each
set she paints these insect on a golden background to refer to
altarpieces and religious icons of the Byzantine. Every insect she
paint are exposed, but resilient and appear embodied with
susceptibility and decency. When you have a good look and visibility
on these mysterious species, you can admire their existence more and more.
Joianna Bitlle
Joianna Bitlle
Joianna Bitlle
Joianna Bitlle
Joianna Bitlle
You all wonder, what do these pictures or the artist itself have to
do with the opening of this article. I mean, I wrote about the
nuclear devastation and deformed animals or insects. I want you to
see how our world is changing from year after year, how endangered
species from big to small are wiping out from our globe. The other
thing I want to show you is, how these beautiful creatures are
changing into deformed and devastated beings. From something so
eerie to be something critically damaged.
_______
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger,
is a Swiss virtual artist and a science illustrator artist. She wants
to represent the insects as an evidence of a beautiful yet endangered
species. She made a lot of studies in the biological or scientific
area of species. She worked for 25 years as a scientific illustrator
for the scientific departement of the Natural History Museum at the
University of Zurich. Her idea is quite simple to me, but it is an
evidence and let us travel into the sphere of these insects or
species. As a scientific illustrator she had to work for Prof. Hans
Burla, a geneticist at the Zoological Institute of the University of
Zurich. In 1967 he gave her an assigment to draw Drosophila
Subobscura flies that had been mutated in the laboratory by adding a
poison (EMS) to their food.
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Hemiptera
or true bugs are the favorite insects of the artist. A few
years later around the 80s, when Chernobyl's catastrophe took place,
she traveled to Sweden and southern part of Switzerland (the Ticino). These areas were contaminated by the fallout from Chernobyl and there
she studied the offspring of true bugs irradiated by rain when the
radioactive cloud from Chernobyl hit Sweden in april 1986 and the
Ticino in May, according to Hesse-Honegger. In 1990 she couldn't
stand without investigating those contaminated areas where the true
bugs formed lives. The bugs she saw were Heavily
deformed and
took it to make studies of it.
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
In 2004 she decided to finally investigate her admiration on true
bugs in Agent Orange spray areas in South Vietnam. Since independent
travel and collection of insects is not permitted, she was very
pleased that the biologist Dr. Bui Thi Lang took time to accompany
her and help her in many aspects of her research. During the long
hours they've traveled Dr. Bui Thi Lang told her about the war, and
the suffering of the Vietnamese people.
Cornelia
Hesse-Honegger, Newborn Child War Museum Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam.
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