BUGS
Experimental photography & circuit bending - 2024/ongoing
Bugs is a playful photographic series based on the double meaning of the word “bug”: both an insect and a technological malfunction.
The series began with photographs of preserved insects encountered in museums and exhibitions. These images were later photographed again using a circuit-bent digital camera, allowing electronic glitches to distort their colours, textures and forms.
By bringing together insects and digital errors, Bugs creates a simple encounter between the organic and the technological ; two very different kinds of “bugs” within the same image.
Over time, Bugs has also developed beyond the original photographic series. Alongside my artistic practice, I create jewellery and regularly take part in independent makers’ markets in Brussels. Bugs has become the series I bring with me to these events, where I offer small, affordable prints and photographic proofs.
I like the idea that the work can exist outside traditional exhibition spaces in this way. At markets, people often spend time looking through the different insects until they find their bug, the one they want to take home. The series has gradually become a small collection of creatures that can be chosen, adopted and carried into different homes.
More recently, Bugs has also become the basis for a collaboration with Louis Dit Sauret, an artist and jewellery maker working with stained-glass techniques. Using soldered tin, he ornaments fragments of glass, mirrors and other materials. Together, we began combining my insect photographs with his glasswork, allowing the images to take on a new material form somewhere between photography, object and ornament.
