‘Eat Me, Drink Me’ and ‘Wonderland’
The Kimball Art Center would like to invite the public to take a trip down the rabbit hole.
The visual art nonprofit’s two exhibits, — “Wonderland,” a collection of works by renowned international artists David Altmejd, Uta Bekaia, Yasue Maetake, and Catalina Ouyang; and “Eat Me, Drink Me,” a large-scale installation by Jennifer Angus — are now open through Nov. 27.
“Wonderland” prompts patrons to look inward and explore the surrounding world through fantasy-filled creations of hybridized and fragmented forms. At the same time, “Eat Me, Drink Me” urges viewers to return to a state of childlike curiosity and mull over the relationship humans have with the natural world, said Curator Nancy Stoaks.
“Together, these five artists reference a state of transformation, of becoming, or of non-resolution with a deep intention in the material and process used,” Stoaks said. “Visitors will feel the tension between the familiar and the strange, between seduction and repulsion, and between dream-like states.”
“I came upon garments that were embellished with elytra, the hard, outside wings of beetles…” Jennifer Angus, installation and textile artist
The Park Record caught up with Angus, who was at the Kimball Art Center last week, to talk about her exhibit, which utilizes insect carcasses and taxidermy to create site-specific installations.
“It’s like reinventing the wheel with every show, because every space is different,” she said. “The Kimball Art Center sent me the floor plan, and I just started playing. Since I’ve worked with the insects enough, I actually do most of the work on Photoshop. And then when I get to the place, I begin putting the exhibit together.”
Sometimes Angus sets her installations in historic buildings.
“When I do that, I’ll pick up on the venue’s history, but the Kimball Art Center is a relatively new space,” she said. “So it didn’t provide any big logistical challenges. The drywall is the perfect substrate to pin insects to, and this drywall isn’t covered with 20 years of paint.”
“Eat Me, Drink Me” takes up two rooms, and the first room, which is well lit, serves as sort of an introduction to the darker second room, Angus said.
Both rooms feature insects pinned in patterns to the walls and bell jars that house dioramas of insects looking at Victorian-era microscope slides.
“Most of the slides are also entomological, so you have beetles looking at bedbugs and fleas from hedgehogs,” Angus said. “There’s this concept of something small looking at something smaller.”
Since the glass, the shininess and the jars have an association with scientific memorabilia and specimens, Angus decided to create what she calls a wedding cake, a huge tower, in the first room.
The wedding cake is a collection of bell jars on stacked platforms that serve as a pedestal for a taxidermied opossum, she said.
“This kind of gives people a foreshadowing of what they will see in the next room,” Angus said.
On the surface, the next room’s installation depicts taxidermied animals enjoying a dinner party, but as visitors look closer, the roast beef is a wasp nest, the salads are dead flies and the wallpaper patterns are made from cicadas and mimic leaf insects.
“It’s sort of set up like a memento mori painting, lush still lifes that contain an offsetting item that reminds viewers of their mortality,” Angus said. “And what looks like wallpaper, is made from insects, something we don’t want in our houses. So there is an attraction of what we know — wallpaper and patterns — and then as you look closer and see what the patterns are made from, you get this feeling of repulsion.”
While the taxidermies were provided by the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at Brigham Young University, Angus owns all the insects.
The insects are dead and dried, and the colors are all natural, she said.
“Cicadas are the meat and potatoes of the operation because they are hearty,” Angus said. “Some are 20 years old, and they have been used from exhibition to exhibition.”
The artist was drawn to the leaf mimics because of their appearance.
“I think people appreciate how the leaf mimic, which is from the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia,” she said. “They have adapted over the years to look like a particular leaf on a tree found there. But they are also very fragile. If you drop one, it will shatter.”
So, Angus takes care when she sets up and strikes her installations.
“Once the exhibit comes down, the insects will be put onto foam core trays and into storage boxes,” she said.
The exhibit uses approximately 2,500 insects, not including the ones in the bell jars, according to Angus.
“They have all been ethically sourced over 20-plus years, and I haven’t bought any for a while because I reuse them,” she said. “When at all possible I buy farmed insects and when I do, I don’t order large amounts, because that would impact the environment.”
The installation is highlighted by dramatic lighting with colored bulbs set in chandeliers.
“A recent interest for me has been lighting, and during the pandemic, I lit a show entirely with chandeliers, which was just magical to me,” Angus said. “So the next step in my progressive thinking was to change the color of the chandelier’s bulbs. I wondered what that would bring to this.”
Continuing her thoughts, Angus began using mirrors.
“I’ve never inserted mirrors, but started to because they pick up the light,” she said.
The idea to create large-scale installations with insects came to Angus, a textile-design professor at University of Wisconsin– Madison, years ago.
“I always say patterns are my first love, and I was doing some research in northern Thailand about tribal minority dress,” she said. “I came upon garments that were embellished with elytra, the hard, outside wings of beetles, which are metallic green.”
Growing up in Canada, Angus never thought insects, aside from butterflies, were beautiful.
“But I was enchanted by these iridescent specimens, because they were like nature’s sequins,” she said. “I had an ‘a-ha moment’ and decided to take the insects and put them in patterns.”
Angus conceived the idea for “Eat Me, Drink Me” while pondering the relationship between humans and nature.
“I was thinking about how we usually see nature as a commodity that we consume,” she said.
Angus’ thoughts were inspired by Rose Bonne and Alan Mills’ children’s song, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”.
“In the song, this poor lady ends up consuming all of these animals because she mistakenly swallowed a fly,” Angus said. “Then I thought instead of eating animals, why don’t I invite them to attend a dinner party. And that’s how this idea started.”
Over the years, Angus has thought of other insects she would like to work with, but the only one she could come up with that she hasn’t worked with yet is a head lantern beetle. And she would only use it if it were living.
“I have an acquaintance who got lost in the jungle in Costa Rica,” she said. “It was dark and he found one of these head lantern beetles and used it as his light. So I would like to use one, but like fireflies, it would have to be alive so it could generate the light.”
Kimball Art Center’s new exhibits takes a peek down the rabbit hole.
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