HYBRIS: Art against Climate Change

Conversation with artists Yana Zschiedrich.

The artist Yana Zschiedrich lets the building material Styrofoam be decomposed by mealworms in her installation »HYBRIS«, together with Fraunhofer IBP. To do this, she lets the mealworms eat along templates, creating artistic reliefs. Through the feeding work, polystyrene is also transformed into a biodegradable substance (mealworm excretions). The artist Yana Zschiedrich shapes sculptures from this new substance. The installation »HYBRIS« deals, among other things, with the condemnation of nature through the spread of a human-centric worldview and the attempts of humans to escape the subsequent effects. Zschiedrich creates installations together with mealworms that deal with the relationship between architecture, society and nature. She examines how architecture is shaped by political interests and what effects this can have on design, society, human psyche and ecosystem.