Hubert Duprat's Collaboration with Caddisfly Larvae: The Artwork as an "Over-Enactment" at the Turn of the Anthropocene

Abstract: Since the 1980’s, French artist Hubert Duprat started working with caddisfly larvae, a small, winged insect belongingto the order Trichoptera and capable of creating protective cases of materials available in their ecosystem. Aftercollecting the animals from their usual environments, the artist relocates them to his studio where he gently removestheir own natural sheaths and then places them in aquaria that he fills with precious materials – such as gold spangles,opals, lapis lazuli, coral, or pearls. By using these substances, the animals begin to recreate their protective cases that lastas small, unique sculptures as soon as the insects metamorphose. Whereas Duprat traces this work back to his fascination for early entomologists’ studies that investigated the productive collision between organic forms and technologized materials, here I argue that the caddisfly larvae project is a prime example of an inter-species artistic partnership. Indeed, the project, here called “over-enactment”, provides an opportunity to interrogate the supremacy of the anthropocentrism and to play with the notion of human and non-human agency.