In her Portable Bug Cemetery, a mixed  media  installation  and  sixteen  embroidery designs, ALICE SCHIVARDI (Erba, 1976) plays with both traditional applications of the diorama: that, in natural history museums, to represent the fauna in its habitat. natural and the obsessively classificatory one of entomology collections. Schivardi imagines how a permanent, albeit portable, resting place for insects could be. His anthropomorphic gamble is only partially ironic; the Portable Bug Cemetery restores a fragile dignity to these neglected creatures usually considered parasites.

The mounds and miniature coffins are reminiscent of a typical rite of childhood: funerals for deceased pets, rites that mark the first encounter with death as an inevitable part of the natural cycle. Likewise, the embroideries evoke spiritual aspects of mourning, even if the design is reminiscent of diagrams from a scientific treatise.

 

P. Benson Miller

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