Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A Natural History. New York: Society of Illustrators. May 14 - September 20, 2025. https://societyillustrators.org/event/insectopolis/
reviewed by José Alaniz
The late naturalist and myrmecologist E.
O. Wilson casts a long shadow over the exhibit Peter Kuper’s Insectopolis: A
Natural History, and indeed over much of the celebrated cartoonist’s
environmentalist-themed recent works, such as the new non-fiction book of the
same name (2025) which inspired the exhibit and the graphic novel Ruins
(2015). So it makes sense that Wilson would get star billing at the show, via a
prominently-placed (and famous) quote: “If all mankind were to disappear, the
world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten
thousand years ago. But if insects were to vanish, the environment would
collapse into chaos.”[i]
That pretty much encapsulates Kuper’s
stance towards the insect world: one that exists in parallel with ours, closely
overlapping it, while remaining for the most part unseen. Yet (as Wilson’s
quote also implies) that parallel world is under threat like never before in
the last ten millennia, i.e., since humans started mucking up the planet.
Catastrophic biodiversity loss — including of insects — is a feature, not a bug
(sorry) of late industrial capitalism. It didn’t have to be this way, but it
seems we moderns have forced a choice between economic prosperity and a livable,
breathable biosphere. Not the brightest move, as our descendants will likely
conclude, and as some today are already screaming to deaf ears.
Anyway, Insectopolis (the show
and, for that matter, the book) stands as a rebuke to that sort of
thoughtlessness, inviting the visitor to open their eyes to the dazzling,
astonishing diversity and profundity of arthropod life on this shining blue orb.
“There are estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects,” says a helpful label.
“That’s 1.25 billion for every person on Earth.”
Kuper has loved bugs for a long time
(there’s even a photo of him as a nine-year-old, contemplating a moth), but the
exhibit had its origins when the artist was researching his book at the New York
Public Library as a 2020-2021 Jean Strouse Cullman Fellow. Pandemic-era
restrictions meant he spent a lot of time on his own, exploring the renowned, and
now virtually-empty library. The depopulated site suggested to him a
post-apocalyptic setting, which he took up for the book’s framing sequence (seemy Kuper interview). Kuper also created an exhibit of
the work-in-progress, called “INterSECTS,” in part of the library.[ii]
The second floor gallery of the Society
of Illustrators is a rather different space. Cozier. You have to negotiate more
corners. It can get crowded fast. But the tight confines work quite well to
suggest almost a hive-like structure, like you’re traversing a giant termite
colony. (This is probably not the best show for claustrophobes.)
That feeling of compactness begins at
the narrow stairs; you have to let someone come down before you can go up. There
are colorful monarch butterflies glued to the front of each step, leading you
on. Kuper has lined the wall of the staircase with prints from the monarchs’
journey in Ruins, as well as with maps showing their 3,000-mile
migration from North America to a pine forest in Mexico. It might make you feel
like you yourself are on the precipice of a long journey.
That journey takes you through vast
tracts of time as well as space, from the comet cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs
65 million years ago, through all of Homo sapiens history, East and
West, North and South, above and below ground, in the skies and in the oceans.
Insects are everywhere, and they’ve been around forever (or it might as well be
forever: since the Devonian period, over 400 million years ago). That’s a lot
to cover.
Kuper breaks that daunting story into
sections, some with whimsical names, that focus on particular insects and/or
the people who studied them: Cicada’s Brood, Ant Farm, Bee Kind, Entomologists
and Naturalists. Among the latter you’ll find both the usual suspects (Rachel
Carson, Margaret Collins, Alexander von Humboldt) and for some, the unexpected
(Osamu Tezuka!). QR codes link you to the Mexican poet Homero Aridjis reciting
his poem “A una Mariposa Monarca,” to evolutionary biologist Jessica Lee Ware
discussing dragonflies, to professor of Entomology Barrett Anthony Klein dishing
on dung beetles. (Kuper carried over these QR codes from the book.)
There are lots of other amusing touches,
such as a reproduced ad for an ant farm, the sort the young Kuper would have
sent away for. Throughout the space, monarchs seem to flutter above on the
ceiling, all over the walls, even in the men’s room. Some of these prints stand
out in relief, casting shadows against the surfaces to which they adhere. Kuper
also drew a line of ants directly on the wall. In fact, cartoon insects inhabit
much of the real estate not already taken up by Kuper’s framed artwork.
That artwork, of course, is the real
star of the show. It’s always a delight to get up close to comic art, to see
what an artist inks and what they leave as pencils, how much they erased, what
they corrected on the page vs. what they will fix or alter in digital. It
doesn’t hurt at all that Insectopolis features Kuper’s most meticulous, elaborate
drawing, from Cretaceous-era foliage to the classical facades of the NYPL. And
lots and lots of lovingly-rendered bugs. I was quite charmed (and saddened) by
a page from Insectopolis’ cicada section, of said creature burrowing up
over four vertical panels, only to discover that, while it was hibernating over
the last 17 years, humans had tarmacked its path forward. It got Aida’ed.
I also appreciated a color nightscape of
lightning bugs placed in the “Nabokov niche,” with a quote from the famous
Russian-American novelist/lepidopterist: “Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of
a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple — these are our
faithful timekeepers” (this quote concludes the book version of Insectopolis).[iii]
Not all the art, incidentally, is tied to Insectopolis or Ruins.
Kuper throws in his 2009 portrait of the caterpillar from Alice in
Wonderland.
A labor of love from a fully committed
artist with a mission to educate, Insectopolis is a small but terrific show.
Of course, for all Kuper’s herculean efforts, the exhibit can only begin to hint
at the aforementioned dazzling, astonishing diversity and profundity of
arthropod life on this shining blue orb. It’s the perfect companion piece, nay,
extension to the book; almost like a wonderful pop-up version brought to life.
“I hope this exhibition will open
visitors up to a newfound appreciation of these tiny giants that help make our
world go around,” Kuper says in his artist statement. To give the visitor a
sense of all we are losing as our insect biosphere contracts, as we keep
putting development over butterflies, Insectopolis presents us with an artistic
ecosystem, modest in scale but vast in meaning.
[i] A simplified version of a passage from Wilson’s The
Diversity of Life (1992).
[ii] Peter Kuper’s “INterSECTS” took place January
12–August 13, 2022 in the Rayner Special Collections Wing of the NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The
famous one, with the lions.
[iii] The quote comes from Nabokov’s 1969 novel Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
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