An insectopia exercise where transforming the forms of insect and giving them several meanings.

 

 

Butterfly has been used frequently in many Chinese sad any beautiful stories. One of the best examples would be 梁祝(Butterfly Lovers), which told a tragedy happened due to the restrictions and rules rooted in the old Chinese society.

 

Butterfly is a popular insect used to depicted the struggling in restrictions and freedom because of its special life stage called pupa. After emerging from a pupa, an ugly caterpillar can then transform into an amazingly beautiful butterfly. Nevertheless, this beauty can't last long. It sometimes also used to depict the concept that you will have to sacrifices something in order to achieve real freedom.

 

This design was used the roofs and the eaves of traditional Chinese architecture/ Chinese temples to form a butterfly. The easily recognized Chinese eaves portray the old Chinese culture, which linked to rules, restrictions and the sense of being pressured. The old Chinese culture is beautiful, charming and mysterious to us but to certain extent, it killed the freedom of people lived in the history. From another point of view, temples, which referring to religious, also restrict certain freedom from human being.

 

This butterfly is in the flying position, but yet, it is so heavily restricted by all the "rules" and forms.

Are we in the same situation like this now ? or have we gone through this already?

This is an extended design for 蝶dié (butterfly), the final one was in A0 size but I think it could be in a much larger size. Born from the original idea of the butterfly, this design was arranged butterflies as if they are "locked" to each other. That's how moral and ethical believes are formed: influenced by people around and developed a belief that is agreed by most of the people in the society.

 

However, thinking back, if let's say there should be a head of all the belief started to form, is there a trust worthy resources? Is there really a correct "standard" rules? Are we really doing the right "things" or just "things we been told that is right?"

 

The main concept is to be released from the old and stubborn beliefs and limitations. We need to think, evaluate, and acknowledge our own thinking by ourselves, not others.

 

It is a design of combining weapons with mantis. The original idea was derived from proverb "螳臂擋車", which means kicking against the pricks. 

Then we realized there are so many people nowadays, from those live in wars to those who stay in peace like us, armed up themselves with different kinds of "weapons" because they are actually weak of frighten. Arming is just a method to prevent other people discovering their weaknesses.