Internationally known photographer Catherine Chalmers communicates a respect for nature by focusing on one of its lowliest creatures—the cockroach. This mid-career survey of large-scale color photographic images includes three bodies of the artist’s work and a number of her recent videos. In her large works, Chalmers documents roaches living in an insect-sized dollhouse and roaches that have been painted and placed on flower petals that camouflage their bodies. In another series, insects that have died a natural death are staged in mock executions, hanging in gallows and sitting in small electric chairs. The artist creates these images to humanize these insects and call out attention to the preciousness of life.
Although this exhibition features Chalmers’ work on the cockroach as subject matter, her subjects also include the life cycles of other small insects and animals. Her work is included in major museum collections around the world.
The presentation of this exhibition at the Racine Art Museum was
made possible by: Presenting
Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd, RAM Society Members,
The Hearst Foundation, Inc., and Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold
Sponsors - Racine United Arts Fund, The Richard and Ethel Herzfeld
Foundation, and Wisconsin Arts Board; Silver Sponsors - Osborne and
Scekic Family Foundation and Real
Racine; Bronze Sponsors - E. C. Styberg Foundation, Inc., In Sink
Erator, Midwest Contemporary Glass Art Group, and Target
