POOR LITTLE BEETLE
since 2023, ongoing
various media
Poor Little Beetle is an ongoing body of work centred on the figure of the dung beetle and the fragile, persistent labour of making one’s way through the world. Its starting point is the Polish expression biedny żuczek — “poor little beetle” — used to describe someone clumsy, lost, vulnerable or deserving of compassion.
WORKS / MATERIAL STUDIES
The figure of the beetle becomes a way of thinking about the human condition: small in relation to the world, burdened by repetition and uncertainty, yet continuing to move. Like a Sisyphean creature, the dung beetle rolls its ball with relentless determination, performing a gesture that may appear purposeless from the outside but is nevertheless part of a larger ecology of transformation.
Through earth, buried and embroidered textiles, drawing, moving image and sculpture, the project explores labour, decomposition, fragility and persistence. Soil becomes both material and collaborator; surfaces are buried, altered and brought back into view, while insects appear as agents of decay and renewal.
Rather than seeking heroism in resistance to the absurd, Poor Little Beetle turns towards the anti-heroism of fragility. It asks whether meaning might emerge precisely through small, repetitive and often invisible gestures — and through the tenderness of continuing to shape something from earth.
BLACK-WHITE-RED PILL
Black-White-Red Pill Piglets on the altar of La Misericordia Church in Venice.
The three Porcellini di Terra (earth piglets) celebrate an unceasing devotion of the earthy-terrestrial gods to creation of life on Earth. Made entirely of natural materials, the Piglets can easily return to humus and mud when their time comes. But until then, they enjoy visiting places – whether it’s a decaying tree trunk in a forest or the colorful marble stones of a thousand-year-old church.
They are our earthy companions who take care of the transformation of matter bringing life out of death.
Each of these earthy specimens is around 14 cm in diameter and weighs 3 kg.
more works from EARTH / DECOMPOSITION / UDERGROUND: