Geneviève Bouthot

The installation Cyclus unfolds as a meditation on ecology: that subtle web of relationships between living beings and their environment. It explores the instinct for survival, inscribed in the very essence of life itself: no jars, no lids, no walls can contain it. Humans, insects, and microbes come and go, bound by a fragile yet necessary dynamic. An endless cycle guides life and matter to dissolve, transform, and be reborn. 

The materials, fired at low temperature in cazette, are handled with care; nothing is lost. The residues become fuel, then pigment, during the smoking process. An insect-eating bird, the solitary thrush, embroidered and printed in cyanotype, appears alongside insects expanding into new territories. On a vase, beetles and embroidered roses meet, uniting the besieging and the cultivated. The repeated insect motifs recall the brocades and printed fabrics of industrialization, that displaced merchants, migrating humans, and clandestine insects alike. The devoured urn evokes greed. The rounded vases suggest bodies — human or insect — each sealed by its own lid… but what can it truly contain? 

Cyclus offers a benevolent gaze upon life, ennobling the despised and the neglected, and revealing the beauty within the metamorphoses of the living.