One of the keys to understanding the meaning of “Object of Desire” – the collection of objects, a video and an installation by Erika Harrsch – is to understand it as analogies of femininity and the capacity acquired by some species of butterflies to transform their physical appearance in order to be confuses with others that, like the Monarch butterfly, are toxic and for that reason undesirable to predators. Of course such analogies imply that evolutionarily, femininity has required this mimetic capacity in order to survive, and the affirmation that its existence is and has been historically conditioned by hostility.

“Imagos” is a series of imaginary hybrids constructed of amplified, cut-out photographs of various species of real butterflies, in whose abdomens are fused photographs of the genital organs of women of the same geographic origin as the species represented; it puts forth an idea that is enlarged and deepened in the installation and video. Mounted in showcases and exhibited as in an entomological museum, the butterflies and women share, metaphorically, the fact that their gender can be identified only through dissection, if you discard any other of their psycho-physical attributes from their sexual identity. The lips of the vulva now spread to view, unfurling their acceptance of nymph or chrysalis, beautiful young woman and fairy of the forests, not only accentuates their character as objects of desire, but also, sardonically, their character as taxonomic specimens -- indicating the degree of confinement imposed upon the feminine.

“Pupa” is an installation consisting of the asexual infantile human body, without head or extremities, molded in fiberglass like a swaddling of larvae preparing for their last metamorphosis. Monarch butterflies (photographed, printed on translucent material, twisted and inserted into the orifices of the body), whose movement constantly replicates an attitude of calling out or scolding, are a transposition to a state of conscience, suggesting the photographic fusion of open and closed eyes, mouths and lips of women.

“Object of Desire I,” title of the video of the flight of thousands of Monarch butterflies, generalizes this state of conscience. Even more than the impressive spectacle of their incessant fluttering, the proposal of a new context for understanding the phenomena turns on the innumerable meanings uncovered by analogy to the butterfly-woman. The vital juncture of birth, agony, death has always been theme of Erika Harrsch’s painting, photography, objects, video and installation, and culminates in her performances in which she submits her own body to transitory deformations. “Object of Desire” represents the discovery of the key metaphor that artistically informs her extensive entomological and psychological investigations, but also the personal experience of unity, which evolves infinitely. Thus, it is possible to think that Desire can be toxic, and ends equally in death as in revelation.

- Luis Carlos Emerich