In ongoing project Honey, Please, I have been reflecting on the chronic anxiety and recovery from the apocalyptic pathos caused by news coverage of, for example, the insect decline. The project is about finding and nurturing hopefulness, sensitivity, tenderness and care through art. The decline of pollinators and the shrinking of bee populations as a result of biodiversity loss are intertwined with issues of low birth rates, reproductive pressures, budding baby fever and images of a looming future. How to secure interspecies partnership and coexistence? What is good and true? How to update your dreams while experiencing the pain of letting go? How strange (?) it feels to love someone who hasn't even gotten their start yet! Is motherhood already in me?
My series has been strongly motivated by questions about my own relationship to
motherhood, "procreation" and children; the desire to attach and to love. This longing,
however, somehow keeps getting banalised and becomes stale against the baby faces on my Instagram feed and the fertility treatment ads popping up on Facebook.
The juxtaposition of babies and insects is based on the idea of interdependence between species (for humans — I believe the insect will be fine without us) and thus an attempt to put species on an equal footing for viewing. The relationship between the physicality and form of photographs and their content is increasingly connected in my own work. In particular, I am interested in questioning the traditional ways of presenting photography and exploring the material dimensions and potential of photography as three dimensional and tangible work.