Questioning the entomological and loverly urge to put butterflies in boxes, 2025
Questioning the entomological and loverly urge to put butterflies in boxes is an experimental and disorganized project, which unfolded into many small gestures in the German Seafarers’ House of Alexandria.
It started as an invitation to inhabit their space and imagine an artistic proposal for the return of the spring. This invitation transformed the house and its garden into a messy (in the best possible way!) playground for experimentation and togetherness ; exploring fragility through different gestures of collecting, reshaping, creating, and caring for what usually resists the stillness.
“The spring is back, with all its bugs and wonders. The butterflies are butterflying, in the gardens and in the stomachs. It's time for The Fat Lady to go outside. Finally.
The cradling idleness of this seemingly-never-ending winter has been so, so comfortable. It is the easiest way to interact with the world : when you're not here you don't risk anything, when you're curating with precision your own presence in the world, you're free to live in your own projections. So, so comfortable, to get stuck alone in your bedroom with all the windows closed. Getting out in the world is accepting to see and to be seen with rawness and transparency, to be present, to be exposed and exhibited, to be vulnerable, to be porous. There is only one way to escape from melting into yourself.
Let the spring come to you.
The Fat Lady finally blooms. Maybe she felt her heart was a bit sweeter, but nectar and honey attract bugs. And bugs sting. She could never refrain herself from scratching the itches and scratching the itches and scratching the itches and scratching the scabs, leaving on her skin scars in the shape of butterflies. Making art is creating meaning and I'm convinced it requires some obsessiveness.
Let the spring come to you.
Nature works in mysterious ways and in contained chaos. She elaborates systems and lets life bend its own walls. She's deeply unserious and unreasonable. We, as beings of nature, don't need reasons either. You only get the answers if you ask the questions, and some words are always more beautiful when they're left untold. You will never know which ones, though.
When questions are unanswered, the everyday is all we have left : tying strings and making knots, connecting, linking, creating a web that circles around all of the world and our loved ones and our enemies too if needed, drawing butterflies obsessively, mimicking nature in its clutter and noncompliance. Finding out that everything is connected in the most overwhelmingly gut wrenching and beautiful way possible.
Let the spring come to you.
Do it badly and do it with love, let it become good later, embrace the imperfect and unhinged, be messy like the nature, don’t tidy yourself, don't water yourself down, don’t be ashamed to be weak or to be too much to bear, stop avoiding : say, tell, show, be curious and ask questions, don’t be scared of their answers, have the confidence to be unreasonable, sometimes, porous, always.
Not everything has to be permanent, transactional, reciprocal nor tidied up to perfection. Nothing is really poetic in the world and the adventure is a daily thing, there is no event. Life just happens, and we write the poetry out of it. Moments are just moments and silences just silences. It’s the heartbeat that makes the music, not the world.
Let the spring come to you.
I don't believe anymore in making art alone in my bedroom, I don't believe in the organized or the planned or the ruled, I don't believe in beauty as something to reach for. I believe in in-betweens, in experimentation and iteration and trials and errors and the lot of tripping along the way ; I believe in disobedience, vulnerability, fragility, porosity, plasticity and a healthy amount of obsessiveness. All things are fun because they're messy. The butterflies were already here from the beginning, you just needed to open your blinds.
Let the spring come to you.”
The exhibition
A small solo-show was installed in the main hall, showing older paintings and prints alongside with newer textile works. These images were accompanied by a poetico-curatorial writing, guiding the audience through both the process and the feeling.
The performance
I believe the heart of the project was the live-mural-painting-performance of the house’s garden wall. With Marisa Sardo and her classical guitar in the foreground, the act painting became an imperfect performance of images in movement.
Later, another live-drawing performance happened, during Amro Zidan and Zeyad Medhat’s Tawreet first show.
The workshop
Finally, we felt the need to finalize the project by opening it to a broader conversation - with a butterfly-making workshop welcoming guests to co-exist, be-with, and make-together for a full day of collective crafting.
