BEAUTY AND UGLY IS RELATIVE

Cicadas have been featured in literature since the time of Homer's Iliada, and as motifs in art from the Chinese Shang Dynasty.  They have been used in myths and folklore to represent carefree living and immortality. But we don't think of cicadas when we think of a beautiful animal nowadays.

Because we are socially conditioned, humans idolze what is beautiful according to beauty patterns. Cultural relativism shows us the criteria of beautiful and ugly change in the course of time and from culture to culture. I would say that today butterflies are the modern cicadas, but how long for?

 

In this project I treated the cicadas as If I was tracing a pattern. The mix of ceramic and glas stones, components with their bodies make a dance of colours that almost remind me of a Mc Queen print. Cicadas are a very versatile animal to work with, they are easy to manipulate and have a tough central body that allows you to use a wide variety of elements.