Museum Sinclair-Haus

Flügelschlag – Insects in Contemporary Art

Insekten in der zeitgenössischen Kunst

Useful and harmful, a blessing and a curse, fascination and phobia: these are only some of the ambivalences that characterize the relationship between humanity and insects, which is explored in the current exhibition at Museum Sinclair-Haus. Beating Wings—Insects in Contemporary Art gathers works by twenty international artists to survey the range of creative perspectives on the “insect”—as a figure of horror in science fiction, unwelcome guest, or indispensable link in our changing ecosystem.

The publication accompanying the exhibition includes detailed documentation of the altogether sixty-eight works by Anita Albus, Mirko Baselgia, Bertozzi & Casoni, Lili Fischer, Esther Glück, Lea Grebe, Dominic Harris, Akihiro Higuchi, Timo Kahlen, Laurent Mignonneau & Christa Sommerer, Claire Morgan, Maximilian Prüfer, Vroni Schwegler, Günther and Loredana Selichar, José Maria Sicilia, Gregor Törzs, and Rosemarie Trockel. In sculptures, drawings, watercolors, photographs, films, and installations, the artists examine concrete ecological challenges such as the bee die-off, registers of iconographic symbolism and the metaphorical meanings of the beetle as a subject in art history, or echoes of man’s conception of nature in Romanticism and other epochs.

The catalogue Beating Wings—Insects in Contemporary Art unfolds its subject in a wide thematic spectrum. Alma Balmes, Andrea Firmenich, Susanne Glasl, Anita Hosseini, Martina Padberg, Ursula Ströbele, and Stefan Vicedom contributed brief introductory notes on each artist; Andrea Firmenich wrote the preface.

Current exhibition
July 7. through October 13, Beating Wings—Insects in Contemporary Art, Museum Sinclair-Haus