Sculptures are built through careful planning and ongoing tending, but the final form remains partly unpredictable. Wooden frameworks and organic embroideries are shaped with boundaries that bees sometimes disrupt, producing mandala-like low-relief qualities after bee activity. A newer ceramic series, Kintsu-Bee, adapts the Japanese tradition of repairing broken ceramics with metallic lacquer. The repair process embraces breakage by mending vessels while highlighting cracks instead of hiding them. Bees are guided to rebuild missing sections, such as recreating a mug handle or filling fissures in a dinner plate. The resulting honeycomb structures function as restoration and as a memory of the past, linking human damage to the earth’s ability to heal.
"Whether creating wooden frameworks or organic embroideries, the artist leaves it to bees to create the ultimate form. Wooden pieces are mandala-like and take on the quality of low reliefs once the bees have done their part. The outcome can only be predicted so much, because the insects sometimes disrupt carefully placed boundaries while building their own bulbous constructions."
"The process embraces the nature of the breakage itself, mending the vessel yet highlighting the cracks as a way of embracing the object's history rather than trying to camouflage it. In Roth's iteration, bees are invited to reconstruct the missing parts, guided around forms to create the missing handle of a mug or fill in the fissures of a dinner plate."
"“Mirroring the philosophy of kintsugi, the unique architecture of the comb acts both as a restorative measure and as a visual memory of the past,” says a statement. “When extracted, the delicacy and complexity of the composite objects-half human and half insect-tell a story not just of human violence but of the earth's capacity for repair.”"
Read at Colossal
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]