Insect Art From Amsterdam

As you know we’re very interested in temporary structures and and flexible living, but what if life itself is ultimately temporary? 

This Autumn, Antwerp’s Verbeke Gallery will be swarming and buzzing when Amsterdam-based artist duo STARTEL launches an installation consting of living flies. From maggots to pupae to a work of art: the unbridled vitality of this mere seven day flies live cycle is the starting point of this remarkable installation.

Earlier this year the guys of STARTEL gave a stunning presentation about the life of a fly and about their artworks at our PechaKucha Night in Amsterdam. What would you do when your life only lasted a week? This exhibition in Antwerp is about the banality of existence, finiteness and the urge to leave a mark behind.

The Verbeke Gallery will be a laboratory in which large amounts of the ‘Calliphora Vomitoria’ (blue bottle fly) will be breed. In a closed off tent flies will be led to sheets of paper by means of luminous food and lured in by fluorescent illumination. They will leave their track behind through a specially developed ink and their lives passage will be saved for eternity. Alongside this installation, results of earlier fly installations and works made from and by dead flies will be shown.

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