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Cole Swanson

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This large-scale installation artwork is a reference to the pre-modern belief that honeybees were spontaneously generated from cattle bodies in a vicious ritual called ‘bougonia.’ The literal and symbolic act of killing and burying cattle to repopu

Twelve cells of the installation are filled with white sugar, the thirteenth with cattle bone char. In most refining plants, sugar is stripped of its colour when filtered through fragments of burnt cattle bone. Interestingly, this char is the prima

Human participants move through the installation as if they were traversing both an industrial farming operation and circumabmulating a ritual space. Visitors unwittingly perform the honeybee 'waggle dance' a non-auditory form of communication betw

All sugar from the installation was reclaimed and donated to the Honeybee Research Centre at the University of Guelph to support the living hives at the apiary.

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This large-scale installation artwork is a reference to the pre-modern belief that honeybees were spontaneously generated from cattle bodies in a vicious ritual called ‘bougonia.’ The literal and symbolic act of killing and burying cattle to repopu

Twelve cells of the installation are filled with white sugar, the thirteenth with cattle bone char. In most refining plants, sugar is stripped of its colour when filtered through fragments of burnt cattle bone. Interestingly, this char is the prima

Human participants move through the installation as if they were traversing both an industrial farming operation and circumabmulating a ritual space. Visitors unwittingly perform the honeybee 'waggle dance' a non-auditory form of communication betw

All sugar from the installation was reclaimed and donated to the Honeybee Research Centre at the University of Guelph to support the living hives at the apiary.

Cole Swanson acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.