Diaethria 88

A number appears in the wing. The face becomes a sign.

Diaethria takes its visual cue from the Neotropical butterflies commonly called eighty-eights. Their ventral hindwings carry black lines over white fields that can resemble the numerals 88 or 89, while flashes of red sharpen the contrast. The work does not reproduce a single species literally; it translates this graphic language into an imagined face.

Two scarlet wings extend from dark, enlarged eyes. Beneath them, concentric black and white markings repeat like codes, targets or mirrored figures. At the centre, the pale mask introduces a skeletal presence, placing transformation between insect anatomy and human mortality.

The mask is formed in plaster and coloured by hand with professional cosmetics made for the human face. Makeup becomes sculptural material, fixing a practice usually associated with temporary transformation inside the shadow-box frame.