Thea Baumann

Nymph Nursery 2005
3D Animation
(Michael Rigby, animation)

Question  Thea, can you explain your work as a blurring of oppositions between reality and illusion, the physical and immaterial, surface and interface, the animate and the inanimate, nature and artifice?

This piece references aphid's unique reproductive system, parthenogenesis – the ability to give birth to clones. Can you tell us about your interest in animal self-cloning?

Answer  The Aphididae Queen’s abdomen becomes a translucent womb, glowing with life as nymphs float within amniotic fluids. She delivers her clone offspring through a process of parthenogenesis (virgin-birth, a form of reproduction in which an unfertilized egg develops into a new individual), and viviparity (giving birth to living offspring that develop within the mother’s body).

Nymph Nursery is inspired by notions of asexual reproduction prevalent within the insect world, documentation of the foetus in utero, and draws connections to the portrayal of the alien queen in Aliens. Distinctions that exist between human and insect reproduction, science fiction and science fact are dissolved as organic insect forms are hyperstylised and translated into polygons.

I have always viewed my art practice as a laboratory of sorts - a locus for me to conceive virus-like identities to unleash into real spaces and imagined worlds. As a phenomenon which appears within nature and in particular the insect world, parthenogenesis is a concept I embrace as a female artist exploring 3D technologies. It is a channel through which I may attempt to re-colonize the virtual frontier with my own digital creatures and pests.