Since the early nineties, Nancy Macko has drawn upon images of the honeybee society to explore the relationships between art, science, technology and ancient matriarchal cultures. As a social practice, Macko’s work addresses life’s fundamental questions. She photographs the process of the life and death of plants that serves as a metaphor of our brief existence. As an artist working with many media, including photography, printmaking, and installation, Macko wishes to present the natural world’s often hidden beauty in the photos she takes.
For the last ten years, Macko has been photographing flora using a macro lens in order to reveal the less apparent, less obvious features concealed within these beautiful specimens. She captures them from bud to bloom to seed -- all manifestations of the life cycle. In recording the life cycle of bee-attracting flora, she hopes to shed light on our own brief lifespan.
In The Fragile Bee, Macko looks closely at the world of bees, not only to examine their biology and somatic features, but also to study their habitat and highly organized society. The group of works consists of four interconnected multi-disciplinary and multi-media installations. The work is intended to bring awareness of the bees’ current plight and how we can alter it. The plight of the bees is a call to action that is a social and political action with its roots in feminism. It requires a mindfulness about our place in the universe and our purpose in our lives. The bees are a symptom and a sign of much deeper and broader problems in our environment. How we treat the bees is symptomatic of how many women and children are treated around the globe. Our awareness needs to expand so that we can fix/solve/heal these plights. There is a parallel connection here. If we don’t save the bees this will not only affect food supplies but also food prices, which will have a worldwide ripple effect. If we don’t create a safer world in which women and children can truly thrive, we will sacrifice a collective balance that can only have catastrophic consequences.
Exhibition organized through Katharine T. Carter & Associates.
Lore of the Bee Priestess, 2004. Digital video, 13:43 minutes.
Nancy Macko's previous explorations addressed issues of memory loss, dementia and cognitive decline –changes she witnessed as they affected her mother’s mental health. Uniting a life-long commitment to incorporate a spiritual respect for the world with her subject matter, Macko integrated aspects of aging and decline with notions of the spirit of life regardless of what point on the continuum we find ourselves. This work, shown from 2011-14, was realized as Hopes and Dreams: A Visual Memoir. Her interest in 'end of life' has clearly informed her photography.
Her work is in numerous public collections including: Denison Library and the Samella Lewis Collection of Contemporary Art at Scripps College; the Arithmeum Museum at the University of Bonn; the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Bell Gallery at Brown University; the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art; the New York Public Library; the North Dakota Museum of Art; Pomona College Museum of Art; Gilkey Center for Graphic Art, Portland Art Museum; the RISD Museum of Art; and most recently, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.