Me and the Caterpillar VI

Me and the Caterpillar VI is the final work in the Me and the Caterpillar series and depicts the larva of the Indian Fritillary, an insect the artist feared during childhood. Although this caterpillar is not poisonous, the artist misinterpreted its vivid appearance as a sign of toxicity and remembered it as an object of fear and aversion. Even when this belief was corrected by people close to him, the perception was not easily altered.

What was directed toward the caterpillar at the time was not fear alone, but also a sense of repulsion accompanied by curiosity about what might happen to it. The image of “death” that runs through this work recalls childhood experiences of floating a caterpillar in water inside an insect cage and watching its fate.

While many works in this series take photographs that exist as records but are disconnected from the artist’s own memory as their point of departure, this work instead addresses a subject that long existed only in memory. A photograph of an Indian Fritillary larva that the artist happened to take on the roadside in 2021, the year of production, is referenced here as a record that for the first time connects with that memory.

The composition maintains the structural relationship between “figure” and “ground” used throughout the series, while outlines and subtle bleeding rendered in transparent watercolor emphasize the instability of the image and the sense of distance.

Me and the Caterpillar VI demonstrates how misrecognized fear and curiosity, and the inverted relationship between memory and record, can be transformed into material form through a later act of recording, quietly bringing the series to a close.