Ancestral
memories
and the
transience
of matter

Fossil amber, douglas-fir, veneer, beeswax & 20.000 bees

A WORK ABOUT THE TRANSIENCE OF MATTER.
The individual recognizes the transience of matter, still our human desire to keep and hold desperately tries to intervene. We value elements like gold for their chemically non-reactive properties, yet it is organic matter -most capable of decay- which allows ancestral memories to transcend matter.

With ‘Essence of Beeing’, Essaidi attempts to explore these matter-transcending memories, -hidden in carefully organized organic structures- by merging both modern- and ancestral bees to form a glimpse of their true shape.

Essence of beeing
Coniferous trees are known for their high contents of resinous tree sap, which is harvested and used by bees to make their own antibiotics: propolis. Due to its sticky nature bees tend to get trapped in this resin from time to time and over time -in the right circumstances- this resin will turn into copal and finally into amber.

Light-bending properties of this 20 million year old amber provide an alternative view of present-day bees by deforming the image of a living colony of bees, ‘evolving’ them, while the preserving property of amber shows the trapped ‘un-evolved’ ancestral bees. Through a merger of both these properties we feel a glimpse of the true shape of the bee.

With this work Essaïdi shows Nature’s genius at its work fighting time through antibiotics, time-capsules and evolution -the tools with which nature fights a transient world.