Beauty is ... a dead mouse, a mummified frog, a dehydrated wood louse. According to Patricia Kamps. at least. She has been fascinated by things that are fleeting for years. And especially by dead animals. “I see the beauty of it, others find it repulsive.” Kamps brings the morbid into contact with the beautiful: she combines dead animals with jewelry. “That way, I want to show people the beauty of the repulsive in a very subtle way.”
What is repulsiveness? This question has been occupying the young Dutch artist Patricia Kamps for years. “Whenever I find a dead insect, I can look at it for minutes, completely fascinated. Other people want to throw the animal away as soon as possible. Why? How come they find it repulsive and I don’t?”
Kamps decided to get to work with her collection of dead animals. “I started combining them with jewelry. Gold, silver, diamonds, crystal, pearls. Those are the things people’s eyes are drawn to. Looking at my work, you first see a beautiful jewel and then you realize what you’re really looking at. A mummified toad on a pearl necklace, for instance. That way, I try to confront people very subtly with their own thoughts on repulsiveness. I want to show them how much beauty there can be in dead animals.”
Sometimes the dead animals are half decayed and mummified, others have been stuffed or treated in some other way. “In the future I would like to learn how to stuff them myself. Right now, I am too dependent on the stuffed animals other people can provide.” She finds many of the insects herself. At home, in a corner of the room. Or outside, dehydrated by the sun. But her work also produces new collectors. And that is really what Kamps wants to achieve: getting other people enthusiastic. “The other day, a woman I did not know called me. ‘I found a beautiful dead frog’, she said. ‘Would you like me to send it to you?’”
Link:
www.patriciakamps.blogspot.com
