Que l’empreinte soit . . . le contact d’une absence expliquerait la puissance de son rapport au temps, qui est la puissance fantomatique des “revenances” et des survivances : choses parties au loin mais qui demeurent, devant nous, proches de nous, à nous faire signe de leur absence.
(That print is the contact of an absence would explain the power of its relation to time, which is the ghostly power of “revenance” and survivance: things that have gone away but remain, before us, close to us, signifying their absence.)
Georges Didi–Huberman – La ressemblance par contact
An important recurring theme in my work is absence. My bee prints, cyanotypes and even photographs have in common the imprint of bees that once were, present only through their trace, their index. Throughout the project, I reflected on presence through absence, the feeling of abandoned spaces left with traces of those who came before helped articulate the emphasis on disappearance I had been working towards.
Ghost prints took on 3 forms that each speak of disappearance factors:
Domestication through bee smoker prints.
Parasites shown through the depiction of the nocturnal flight of bees bitten by the zombie fly.
Environmental toxins shown by batik prints tinted by Red River clay, earth pigments and dyes.
