Phantom Kin: a Mutual Metamorphosis is the accompanying text to the exhibition of the same name by interdisciplinary artist Ava Katz, based in Vancouver BC.
Phantom Kin is an immersive sculptural environment that draws on insect ecologies to reconsider how we define what is “natural”.
Large-scale textile sculptures, sound, and text explore biomimicry as a natural survival tactic, as well as queer strategy, which resists rigid classification and destabilizes dominant paradigms. Biomimicry exists in a process of ongoing evolution; these pieces illustrate the strengths of community and fluidity as paradigms of adaptation while enduring shifting circumstances.
The accompanying artist’s book, curated, photographed, and written in collaboration with artist Violetta Leigh, combines prose, drawing, interview, and filmic image documentation to further explore how queerness has historically been positioned as “unnatural”. By examining insect behaviors that disrupt cis-normative projections onto nature, the publication reframes fluidity, androgyny, and non-binary reproduction as intrinsic ecological conditions. Extending beyond the gallery, the book operates as both artwork and field guide—a tool for the viewer to unpack cultural presumptions and reimagine kinship across species boundaries.
The body of work champions even the smallest and most overlooked beings, asking what forms of community we might build if we embraced interdependence over hierarchy. Insects teach us that survival is collaborative, that intelligence is distributed, and that transformation is ongoing.
57 pages
colour
Phantom Kin: a Mutual Metamorphosis is the accompanying text to the exhibition of the same name by interdisciplinary artist Ava Katz, based in Vancouver BC.
Phantom Kin is an immersive sculptural environment that draws on insect ecologies to reconsider how we define what is “natural”.
Large-scale textile sculptures, sound, and text explore biomimicry as a natural survival tactic, as well as queer strategy, which resists rigid classification and destabilizes dominant paradigms. Biomimicry exists in a process of ongoing evolution; these pieces illustrate the strengths of community and fluidity as paradigms of adaptation while enduring shifting circumstances.
The accompanying artist’s book, curated, photographed, and written in collaboration with artist Violetta Leigh, combines prose, drawing, interview, and filmic image documentation to further explore how queerness has historically been positioned as “unnatural”. By examining insect behaviors that disrupt cis-normative projections onto nature, the publication reframes fluidity, androgyny, and non-binary reproduction as intrinsic ecological conditions. Extending beyond the gallery, the book operates as both artwork and field guide—a tool for the viewer to unpack cultural presumptions and reimagine kinship across species boundaries.
The body of work champions even the smallest and most overlooked beings, asking what forms of community we might build if we embraced interdependence over hierarchy. Insects teach us that survival is collaborative, that intelligence is distributed, and that transformation is ongoing.
57 pages
colour
