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It Didn’t Used To Be This Way

2024

butterfly - Danaus Chrysippus (preserved), oscillating fans, "invisible" thread, other electrical components, mixed media

 

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[Exhibition Text:

"A cluster of oscillating fans lie overturned, facing a solitary butterfly. The fans – categorised as “technology” – are the active agents here, generating currents of air that animate the butterfly, the “nature” in this pairing. Yet these categories are entirely human constructs, imposed to separate what in reality is deeply intertwined. In this work, nature is controlled by technology, its movement dictated by an object of human manufacture.

The butterfly depicted is the Danaus Chrysippus Suspended in the fans’ currents, it appears both mesmerisingly alive and perpetually trapped – sustained and controlled in equal measure.

The fans themselves carry associations of the office, the bureaucracy, and the machinery of the Western workplace. Here, they have been removed from their utilitarian purpose and tipped on their backs, writhing and rolling, as if caught in their own absurd performance.

The title of the work draws a parallel between the metamorphosis of the butterfly – its radical transformation over a short lifespan – and the rapid, accelerating growth of technology. Together, they speak to cycles of change, dependency, and the uneasy relationship between living systems and human-made machines."]

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Image :  ‘RSA New Contemporaries’ - Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.