Fruits of Our Land

The work originates from the extraordinary story of an endemic Slovenian cave beetle first discovered in Pekel (Hell) Cave in 1933. Four years later, the species was classified and named Anophthalmus hitleri by the entomologist Oskar Scheibel, who dedicated the species to Adolf Hitler. Cibic mobilises this unsettling historical detail to examine how systems of political ideology become embedded within cultural and scientific forms of naming, classification, and representation.

The wallpaper was produced through a process of delegated authorship that is central to Cibic’s practice. More than forty international entomologists and scientific illustrators were invited to create their own visual interpretations of the beetle. Working only from the Latin name and their disciplinary expertise, contributors were prohibited from consulting existing images or descriptions of the insect. The resulting collection of drawings forms an almost encyclopaedic archive of speculative representations: a multiplicity of projections shaped as much by language and ideology as by scientific observation.

Repeated infinitely across the surface of the pavilion, the beetles transform into a decorative political pattern that oscillates between ornament and propaganda. Through repetition, multiplication, and aesthetic seduction, the work reflects on the mechanisms through which national identities are constructed, circulated, and naturalised. At the same time, it foregrounds how symbols and narratives attached to political regimes can persist long after their historical origins have been disavowed or erased.

Existing simultaneously as installation, archive, and editioned artwork, the wallpaper encapsulates Cibic’s broader interest in the choreography of state representation and the fragile ideological structures concealed within cultural display.