Narration – large formats, 120x240cm, Woodcut, 2023

This project consists of a series of large format woodblock prints depicting scenes from the life of firebugs. The prints are 120x240cm large and are made using black oil paint on rice paper. I initiated this project to tell the story of the lifecycle of firebugs, as few people are familiar with the life of these insects. In addition,
this project allows me to explore questions around insect representation. A visual strategy for instance consisted in enlarging the landscape in order to make the firebug‘s size more approachable to humans.
Furthermore, this project provides an opportunity to deepen my engagement with woodblock printmaking and the use of rice paper to create large scale works.

The creative process started with walks in forests, parks and the rural area around Brussels and in the countryside of Saarland, Germany. During this time, encounters with insects and especially firebugs were registered through photography and film in the phone. When encountering crawly creatures, I sit down in the grass underneath some trees  and register the perceived through drawing, writing, photography and film. These embodied experiences (Browning Cole and Coultrap-McQuin 1992, Donavan and Adams 2016) and entanglements with other beings helped acknowledge the animals as a significant otherness that should be treated with respect and empathy (Haraway 2003, 2008, Gruen 2015, Servais 2016).
At the end of August the fieldwork stops and the process continues in the studio: the gathered impressions lead to drawings in the sketchbook that show generic, species-typical behaviour of firebugs in their natural environment. Repeatedly observed behaviour was classified as typical behaviour, although it is important to note that this classification distorts the very diverse, often enigmatic and unique behaviour of individuals that was actually observed. The three pictures show more or less chronological moments in the life of a fire bug. It starts with the emergence from hibernation in April. The second image shows clusters of firebugs in various stages of molting. The third image depicts a firebug sucking on a lime seed and conspecifics hiding in a crack in the ground, as they tend to do when it gets colder. The animals‘ environment is made up of trees, plants and other beings encountered during the time outdoors, as well as fictional elements such as made-up flowers and combinations of experiences, such as lime seeds falling from a tree and a dragonfly flying by. Like the poetic and fictional worlds of Vinciane Despret (2021) and Jean-Christophe Bailly‘s tales about the diversity of other-than-human existences (2013), the aim is to show the beauty of other animals and invite reflection on the way we live together and could live together.
The studio time from September to June at the RHoK Graphic studio in Brussels, served to develop the sketchbook drawings into a tryptich of 180x240cm woodblock prints.