Pierre Huyghe. Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt). 2012. Concrete with beehive structure, wax, and live bee colony; figure 29 1/2 x 57 1/16 x 17 11/16" (75 x 145 x 45 cm), base 11 13/16 x 57 1/16 x 21 5/8" (30 x 145 x 55 cm), beehive dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds. © 2023 Pierre Huyghe. Photograph: John Wronn.
Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) is a sculptural collaboration between human and insect. The work marries a concrete sculpture of a liegender Frauenakt (reclining female nude) with a self-generating natural system—a living beehive—that progressively covers the sculpture’s head. Untilled makes sly reference to the notion of the “hive mentality” or collective thought process and self-organization. Mutating according to the life cycle of the bee colony and codependent of its environment, Untilled reimagines the notion of sculpture, transforming it from an inanimate object to be seen into a living organism to be experienced.
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