Category: Insects

The Tattoo Art of Chou Chou Incorporates Enigmatic Eyeballs

Chou Chou’s mother stated that during her childhood, she had no other interest besides drawing relentlessly. She completed her secondary education in art and subsequently earned a degree in Western painting from a Korean university. Her initial job was teaching high school pupils art as they prepared for collegiate entrance exams. Afterward, she instructed middle […]

Stories of Death and Creation in Illustrations by Lauren Marx

Lauren Marx is an artist based in St. Louis, Missouri, who tells stories about birth, death, nature, and the suffering caused by mental illness. Her subjects are animals (her longstanding passion), which she draws with a morbid and mythical flair; peruse her gallery and you will see three-headed calves, geese entwined by their entrails, and […]

10 Tattoo Artists Paying Homage to the “Death Moth”

You know a Acherontia atropos—better known as Death’s-head hawkmoth—once you see it. The name refers to one of three species of moths that each have the easily distinguishable human skull-shaped marking on their thorax. The unusual patterning has both intrigued and frightened people. Long ago, its ominous marking was considered a bad omen; entomologist Moses […]

Modern Anxieties: Grotesque, Hyperrealistic Paintings by Beau White

Australian artist Beau White paints surreal, hyperrealistic images that take a magnifying glass to human fallacies and anxieties. Among his absurd and grotesque imagery are large parasitic worms that feast on people and pomegranates—the latter of which, when split open, resemble an eviscerated body, playing with our discomforts surrounding death and decay. The fetal “Chickenpig” […]

Andrey Lukovnikov’s Double Exposure Tattoos Inspired by the Digital Era

One thing that Andrey Lukovnikov’s colorful tattoos might remind you of are clipping masks from Adobe Photoshop. The combination of bold, busy imagery with a crisp edge mimics digital imagery—as if these bugs, birds, and feathers are concealing a larger part of an overall picture. And if you watch some of Lukonikov’s videos, it’s clear […]

Jennifer Angus’ Spectacular Wallpaper Comprised of 5,000 Bugs

Artist Jennifer Angus has produced a site-specific installation that lines hot pink walls with 5,000 real insects. Appropriately titled “In the Garden,” she uses their bodies to produce an intricate, ornamental wallpaper that features iridescently-colored stag beetles, cicadas, and other bugs that are the size of a human fist. Together, these southeast Asia-based creatures form […]

10 Rogue Taxidermy Artists Who Create Imaginative Sculptures

The art of taxidermy has been practiced for a long time; the ancient Egyptians embalmed and entombed cats, birds, and other creatures. Over the millennia, animals have been mounted as hunters’ trophies and museum artifacts. It is an odd practice, one that is traditionally pulled between human pride, symbolism, and a desire to memorialize deceased […]

Tender Sacrifice: The Photography of Ines Kozic

Ines Kozic is a French photographer who decorates youthful bodies with symbols of sorrow, contemplation, and death. Insects are a recurring motif in her work, representing the transience of life and material processes of decay. Her more recent black and white images explore the feminine form in dark relation with the forest, drawing on fairy […]

Tales of Love and Despair: Photography by Elena Helfrecht

Note: Contains nudity. The work of German photographer Elena Helfrecht is like emotional alchemy, combining dark symbols to unearth visions of beauty and despair. Inspired by the folklore and forest landscapes of Bavaria, her photos often include sylvan imagery, the moon, nude bodies, shadowed rooms, and the co-relation between life and death, dreams and awakening. […]

3D Insects and Giant Birds: The Graffiti Art of Mantra

“Graffiti is my background, my family, my culture,” states Mantra, a French graffiti writer who travels across Europe spray-painting creatures of the earth on walls. “I’m sensitive to nature, all little whispers and cries you can find in it. Colors, mimetism, complexity, the phenomenal capacities of adaption, evolution and the fascinating impartiality are all just […]