Between us

Filling the air with the earthy scent of honey, Between Us is a multisensory experience that includes drawings, sculptures, sounds and artworks that defy categorization resulting from a two-summer-long interspecies collaboration between twelve Saskatchewan artists and honeybees.
 
Working with galleries in Prince Albert, Swift Current, Estevan and Yorkton, exhibition curator Sandee Moore invited artists and collectives from across the province to learn how to create artworks in collaboration with honeybees from internationally-renowned artist Aganetha Dyck. There are no secrets, claims Dyck, who has made artwork with honeybee collaborators for over two decades, “there are only surprises.” The exhibition Between Us is a collection of such surprises arising from this unique collaboration between artists, professional beekeepers and their honeybees, unfolding over two bee seasons.
 
While the artists’ methods of producing work for Between Us were, for the most part, the same — placing objects within a beehive for honeybees to transform with the addition of their comb — the resulting work is as varied as the artists themselves. In beehives spread across the province, apian logic danced with artistic inspiration as artists offered their ideas, materials and objects to bees; bees responded by embellishing sculptures with beeswax frills, mending gaps with their golden wax, mimicking vessel walls with their own constructions and packing available space with their hexagonal cells. Through their processes and excretions, honeybees augment the artists’ narratives with records of settlement, family, agriculture, spirituality, the ecology of recycling, the interconnectedness of all species and dependence upon weather and the land.
 
Between Us refers to the distances and differences between us and what we, as humans and insects, have in common. Bees fill gaps with honeycomb. Between Us uses honeycomb to bridge gaps in our understanding of ourselves, other people, histories, land and other species. A fragile and luminescent compassion has been built between us, joining artists, beekeepers, honeybees and audiences in a shared process of learning and wonder.
 
Organized by Art Gallery of Regina. Mentorship and creation funded by Canada Council for the Arts.
 
– Sandee Moore