Catherine Chalmers
Born 1957, San Mateo, CA, lives and works in New York, NY
Ladybugs, 2002, C-print, 45” x 30”, Lent by the Artist
Catherine Chalmers’ artwork reflects her interest in the complex relationships humans have with the animal world. In an earlier series, Food Chain, Chalmers focused on animals that are both predators and prey to reveal the cycle of life as animals kill, eat, and are themselves killed. Chalmers confronts us with events that occur repeatedly in nature but which many of us would prefer to ignore.
In American Cockroach, Chalmers plays on our fear and disgust of cockroaches and their ability to survive and evolve despite human efforts to eradicate them. Using cockroaches that she orders through the mail, she stages and photographs fictive scenarios that raise questions about the survival of species, human attempts at domination, genetic engineering, and the relationship between nature and artfulness.
Chalmers chose cockroaches because “Our hatred of the roach has perhaps grown in proportion to the boundaries we have erected between ourselves and the natural world. These animals…challenge those barriers. …Their trespass upsets our confidence in our ability to successfully control and transform nature.” She paints and decorates the roaches in the Imposters series and places them on beautiful flowers to make them more aesthetically pleasing, asking the question: “Would the world really be a better place if all insects were pretty and only did nice things?”
