1199 Beeswax

This is documentation of my installation 1199 (beeswax). I was taken by the fact that a pound of beeswax, the fruit of labor of so many small animals, could be purchased by me for 12 bucks, such a small sum of money compared to my earning potential as a human. Coupled along with the apparent reality that bees are declining in number each year due to colony collapse disorder, I scribbled in my notebook that week:

1199 beeswax — pennies, like bees, valueless alone. When the bees are gone, the pennies will go with them.

I hung strips of gazen, painted on them with sumi ink, and covered them with melted beeswax. I projected mapped on the parchment 1,199 pennies, built in 3D, moving in a swarm. The room was warm, and smelled heavily of beeswax.

It was produced in 2011 at San Francisco Art Institute as part of my MFA studies.

It was called “A one-dimensional and overly simplistic take on capitalism” by one critiquing professor and a “screen-saver” by the other.

Let’s just say I didn’t exactly take the fine art world by storm.