Open Mo (u)th

From north to south through the pass

“‎‎This particular phase of migration continued for many days, millions and millions arriving from some unknown place, heading south to an equally mysterious destination. On clear nights, by the light of the stars and the moon, our flashlights and portable ultraviolet devices showed continuous streams of moths of all sizes heading up and through the pass."‎.

This is how William Beebe recounts his impressions of the legendary expedition to the Portachuelo Pass in the Venezuelan Rancho Grande in 1946, describing for the first time the migratory flows of butterflies.

Part 1: Catch

Nets on brick bases are placed in the space of the Green Living Room. From subjects of dynamics, they turn into independent monuments — activated traps. Mouths wide open for hunting.

The size of the nets hints to us that there is going to be a hunt for quite a large moth.

Part 2: Cross-scale

“Cross-scale” is based on the metaphor applied by Nabokov, an entomologist, to the description of lepidoptera wing patterns. When calculating wing scales, Nabokov used rows as latitudes and veins as meridians. Thus, in his method, the geographic grid was compressed from a planetary scale to the size of a butterfly’s wing.

We see a stretched net with floating petals of a very recognizable texture. Gutted sneakers turn from an object for running into either scales or a bunch of moths huddled together. Hanging in an overlapping pattern, they form a cloud of the wing of a butterfly of the genus Polyommatus.

Part 3: Archive

On the wall there is a veritable host of four-winged creatures — half-humans, half-moths. The needle, much like a surgical instrument, cuts through pieces of plexiglass, forming a printing mold. The paint is imprinted into the paper under the pressure of a machine, leaving a trace what once fluttered. This is how an engraving is made. Machine, pressure, print. Print, pressure, machine. Now the sheets are gathered together in a collection.