Mason Bee Hive Installation

ARTIST STATEMENT: Elsabé Johnson Dixon Using new media, which often include live insects or insect detritus, opens up a powerful ecological dialogue in a postmodern world. Using research, fieldwork, and audience engagement, art objects produced in context can be witness to environmental change, disruption and actual physical data. All plant, organic, and artificial substances today reveal the DNA of our postmodern existence. Data, and lifecycle systems, pollutants, as well as disruptors, can all be discovered while working with a specific material at a specific time period in history. The work I produce in collaboration with silkworms, bees and now the Spotted Lanternfly, will provide ways of seeing – first and foremost- data and information about our environment at this time. I investigate the potential of object making or interactive environments, to record and hold specific data regarding disruptive events such as the invasive Spotted Lanternfly (which entered the United States in 2014 and systematically wreaks havoc on local agricultural food industries). The Spotted Lanternfly – Zones of Syncopation Project involved over 400 people, 12 community partners and offered a sustainable audience involvement. The only material used to build this project are wooden disks in built in Fibonacci sequence from 1 foot to 8 feet in diameter rounds/disk platforms and Lanternfly wings – collected by many over various stages of infestation from 2019 to 2023. Simple expandable structures like this have the ability to imbed a compelling eco story and the detritus that bears witness to these infestations and the destruction they cause, offer an environmental impact story that extends beyond the objects produced.