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The Flower Girl’s
Dress is dripping with congealed beeswax, and it is enclosed by a
framework of racks from an apiary, or beehive.
The artist, Aganetha Dyck, comes from a rural Mennonite community in Manitoba.
To quote from the gallery’s catalogue, “Dyck has used bees to
transform everything from cigarettes to shoes. Placing objects in the
hive, she waits for the bees to coat them in combs of wax, creating symbols,
sometimes grotesque, of labour, community and decay.
“The Flower Girl’s Dress is part of a series of these
honeycombed objects called The Extended Wedding Party, in which
Dyck uses the world of the hive and the queen bee to comment on the cult
of the bride and female domesticity.
“In this particular piece, the absence of the human body is highlighted
by the empty dress, and the ritual aspects of the wedding brought forward
in the archeological, cultish appearance of the coated clothing, which
is also partially spray-painted with gold like an ancient idol.”
Dyck’s strikingly original work has made her one of Canada’s
most admired artists, and it has often been shown in Concordia’s
Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery.
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