mymodernmet.com: Artist Carlos Amorales’ installation Black Cloud is his way of saying goodbye. The Mexico City-based artist has described the massive artwork as a farewell to his grandmother. He’s done so through 25,000 black paper moths and butterflies depicting 30 species that cover multiple walls and ceilings, reaching great heights.
3 comments:
The sentimental value behind this piece is incredibly moving and inspiring. There’s just so much meaning in this piece. 25000 butterflies and moths, such beautiful insects that can fly and resemble so much. To paint them black and fill a space with so many is so powerful and overwhelming. Mounting them to the walls of the museum, like how they land on walls is so limitless too. It’s also so simple, minus the labor it took to cut out all of these butterflies, it didn’t use crazy technology to make a point. It’s so simple and so beautiful, so captivating, and depicts the life of his grandmother and the mourning of her death so accurately. I wonder if the more concentrated areas symbolize certain parts of her life. This tribute to her life and death is so beautiful and inspiring as an artist and is a reminder that you don’t have to have extravagant materials to make something.
Carlos Amorales’ installation ‘Black Cloud’ is gorgeous and striking. Knowing that its inspiration came from a place of grief and saying goodbye makes a lot of sense. It looks a lot like grief feels. It attaches itself to every part of you, felt unevenly as time wears on. Sometimes it totally eclipses all else and sometimes it’s sprinkled sparsely, just like how in some places the butterflies cover the entirety of an area and sometimes there are just a few. And yet because grief is like an extension of love, there is somehow still some beauty in it. Just like how each of the butterflies are beautiful and the effect of them all together is awe inspiring. The article mentioned that the butterflies depict thirty different species of butterflies. I would love to know what species are depicted and what connection they have to each other or the artist. This installation is amazing and I would love to see it in person.
I think paper is such an under utilized sculpture material because it's so versatile, and especially for a project like this, the lightness of the paper really adds to the airness that you get from looking at the moths and butterflies. The dedication of placing each and every one of those bugs all over the walls is very impressive. I think the sculpture does a good job of creating a sense of forbidding with all the bugs in black feeling like some sort of omen, but it is also beautiful and shows the very exciting natural process of migration for moths and butterflies. I do wonder what sort of process he used to cut out all of these bugs, probably a laser cutter, but I like to imagine that he was just in a tiny studio for months with a tiny pair of scissors, painstakingly cutting out each and every anatomically correct insect.
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