Penelope Kupfer: Insects

Penelope Kupfer's exhibition Insects is a contemplative and meditative research into the concept of food through the pretext of a polemic dish: insects. The idea behind the artist’s drawings is that eating choices are also the manifestation of an anxiety related to immortality. Eating is the wish to perpetuate one’s existence.

Nevertheless, there is another side of eating that is related to the impossibility of knowing with certainty how much the food ingested is affecting one’s body harmony and balance. Every bodily process is a wear and tear activity and this is no different with digestion. Our bodies die a little while trying to keep us alive. No matter how conscious or unconscious, there is always a fear that the food ingested is also shortening one’s life expectancy. From that perspective, each spoonful is a small act of suicide.

Insects are the stereotypical "disgusting" food in the majority of the Western world, despite being rich and efficient in protein and ecologically superior to live stocks. They are a more sustainable option yet play interesting cultural charade games with the Western public. What is behind the culture that refuses insect food while accepting other insect-like options such as shrimp, lobster and crabs?

Kupfer's work is a slow and autonomous process. Repetitive and cyclical, the artist ruminates over the insects, deconstructing them into an infinitude of tiny intricate parts within an endless choreography of circles. Drawing those insects is losing herself into the detail in the hope of finding something by accident. Perhaps there could be some truth hidden behind the physicality of the creature. Or perhaps losing herself in the object is a way to find something in the subject, herself. She has no other option but to open the can of worms and let them out.

At a first glance, it might look like Kupfer's approach to the issue is similar to that of a child breaking a clock into pieces, trying to understand time. The effort is fated to failure. But the act of dissecting the matter is, in itself, the purpose of the research. In that respect, the artist's reduction of insects into many small parts is rather an involuntary movement of digestion than an intellectual intention to understand and explain.

Kupfer's work has been featured in exhibitions in London, Berlin, New York and Sao Paulo, including MoMA NY and a series of workshops at the Tate Britain. In her first solo exhibition at The Vaults Gallery, she will present 24 original new works, alongside a series of hand finished screen prints.