UnNatural History at WOW Festival Manchester: Tania Kovats’ MOONMOTH
Tania Kovats’ new artwork ‘MOONMOTH’ inspired by 17th Century naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian
25–26 May 2024 at Aviva Studios in Manchester
For its 2024 edition, WOW (Women of the World) Festival invited Invisible Dust to curate a new UnNatural History commission by Tania Kovats whose new work ‘MOONMOTH’ explores the legacy of Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717). Kovats’ drawings are of cycles, light and dark, balance and symmetry, the lunar cycle, transformation, metamorphism. ‘MOONMOTH’ was exhibited as part of the first-ever WOW Manchester festival, produced by The WOW Foundation and Factory International. UnNatural History is Invisible Dust’s ongoing enquiry into the importance of art and science to natural history collections and their role in understanding climate change. Explore previous projects.
Download the ‘MOONMOTH’ brochure
A timelapse of Tania Kovats: ‘MOONMOTH’ being unfurled in the vast space of Factory International for WOW Manchester 2024.
Maria Sibylla Merian was an incredible scientific illustrator and entomologist who is credited with ‘changing the nature of art and science’ and who, 300 years ago, made discoveries through her art about metamorphosis and life cycles at a time when there was no scientific idea about the relationship between caterpillars, moths and butterflies. During her lifetime women had little or no access to University education. Still, through her stepfather Jacob Marrell (1614–1681), Merian learnt engraving and from age 13 began keeping silk worms (life cycle video in link), seeing with her own eyes their metamorphosis in their 6-8 week life cycle.
Maria Sibylla Merian’s discoveries and contribution to natural science were enhanced by an extraordinary journey from 1699–1701 to Suriname, South America with her daughter where she created the drawings for ‘Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium’ (1705). This was both a scientifically and artistically internationally acclaimed publication of drawings and watercolours of caterpillars, pupae, moths and butterflies interacting with plants. Crucially, this book focused on the interdependence of species 200 years before the modern notion of ecology. Carl Linneaus, the founder of modern taxonomy was able to name over 100 species thanks to Merian’s Suriname drawings.
To explore Maria Sibylla Merian’s legacy in relation to the current biodiversity crisis, Invisible Dust brought Tania Kovats together with biologist, Diana Arzuza Buelvas, Curator of Entomology at Manchester Museum, Jeanne Robinson, Curator of Entomology from Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum, and Dr Jenna Ashton, Lecturer in Heritage Studies, University of Manchester. Kovats’ new work, ‘MOONMOTH’, explores insects’ need for dark skies and how our human influence through artificial lighting is currently threatening the animals Merian studied. Today, over 40% of the world’s insect species are in serious decline, and moths are vital pollinators impacted by artificial light at night.
Alongside this new commission, interdisciplinary students at the University of Manchester attended workshops on art and science collaborations, hosted by Tania Kovats and curators at Invisible Dust.
This project was supported through the prestigious Simon Industrial and Professional (SIP) Fellowship, Manchester University, awarded to Invisible Dust.
Buy tickets for WOW Manchester here.
To celebrate this edition of ‘UnNatural History’, Invisible Dust commissioned a new booklet around the ideas and artists of the initial 2021 exhibition. With an introduction by Elizabeth Fleur Willis, and an essay on ‘UnNatural History’ by naturalist and author Robert Huxley, the publication provides an insight into the innovative theories connecting natural history, contemporary artists and climate change. The booklet also features interviews with the artists and Invisible Dust curators, Alice Sharp, Adelaide Bannerman and Rachel Taylor.
About Tania Kovats:
Tania Kovats (b.1966, Brighton) studied at Newcastle Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. She is Professor of Drawing and Making at DJCAD, University of Dundee. Notable recent solo exhibitions include ‘As Above so Below’ Parafin Gallery London (2024) ‘Head To Mouth’, Berwick Gymnasium (2019), ‘Troubled Waters’, Phoenix Gallery, Exeter (2019), ‘Evaporation’, Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester (2016), ‘Oceans’, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2014). Important recent group exhibitions include ‘UnNatural History’ (curated by Invisible Dust), Herbert Museum & Art Gallery, Coventry (2021); ‘Future Knowledge’, Modern Art Oxford (2018); ‘Women Power Protest’, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2018); and ‘Vita Vitale’, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2015). In 1991 she was awarded the Barclays Young Artist Award at the Serpentine Gallery, London. In 2015 she was nominated for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Kovats’ practice and research as an artist are rooted in our experience of nature, increasingly with an environmental focus. Her artwork includes temporary and permanent sculptural works, often in the public realm, drawing, filmmaking, and writing. Kovats’ work often pays attention to the world’s waters, rivers, seas and oceans, exploring environmental and socio-political concerns alongside the poetic and personal, to evoke our liquid selves and our interconnectedness with nature.
