2nd floor, 3rd floor, and 5th floor
The Hive and the Host explores the disappearance of honeybees from our contemporary ecosystem – a scientific puzzle that poses a quiet threat to human sustainability on earth. Stephanie Vegh's recent visual practice has returned to this theme several times over by drawing increasing multitudes of bees travelling from vintage book pages to the creases in white paper and, most recently at the Gladstone Hotel in 2011, into the corners of architectural space.
What began as an illusionistic fold rendered on paper to mimic the binding of a book’s promise of scientific knowledge will be translated to physical form in the Walper’s architectural corners. These darkened seams, drawn directly on the Walper’s walls, will serve as entry and exit points for the free-flying passage of bees through the hotel’s interior spaces. Their unpredictable movement from public space to discrete corridors on the upper floor is intended to echo the equally transient and social nature of the hotel as a place of fluid arrival, confluence and departure.
