FRAMEWORK

Title: FRAMEWORK

Year: 2019

Dimensions: (2) 19” x 6” x 5”

Materials: Plastic Beehive frame, beeswax, 3D printed sculptures, resin

In a domesticated beehive, beekeepers construct frames that provide the bees with a foundation to build their society and world of preservation to their species. The bees’ communal work ethic is instinctual all the while out sourcing to millions of flowers, collecting nectar, many miles from the hive. All the while, once the bees fill up the frame with honey and cap it off with a wax seal, beekeepers extract the cells of liquid gold, leaving the bees to begin again. As this cycle perpetuates, the literal sweetness of the bees’ survival is challenged by capital gains of humanity.

As humans, we can be stripped down from societal labeling to reveal our naked flesh - warm and shifting. This body naturally producing energy is put to work by capitalistic motivations, assigning our precious real estate to work in its favor. This body then serves as the bricks of society, and without the fleshy human base, there would be no framework to build upon. This too extracts the sweetness and liquid gold from the cells of our human flesh.  

If flesh is the real structure that social organizations are mapped on, what would it be like to find that flesh with new meanings built upon it? We can only imagine. I’m imagining this alternative construction of meanings by literalizing the idea of human flesh as a site of structure.

My project alludes to the potential social systems outside of capitalism that which we can build upon using representations of human flesh as foundation. This project is meant to stimulate viewers to strip away their identity, and listen to the busy hums of a different social order - imagining what life out of capitalism or any society we know, might produce and look like.  Could sweetness be restored?