Bita Fayyazi Works
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Cockroaches
 
1998, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran, Iran

An installation of 2000 bigger than life size ceramic (glazed) cockroaches.

Almost everyone seems to want to know the answers to everything. I like the mystery of everything. How can anyone take a view on art if they don't understand its general context. The reason why I have devoted my time and a part of myself to that pesky insect "the cockroach" is basically my profound interest in the critter and I am fascinated with the fear they instill in the weak of spirit.
 
Cockroaches
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2000, Ekbatana? , Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

2001, Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbican Center, London, UK
 
Cockroaches
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"Archy" the cockroach lived with Don Marquis and wrote poems on Marquis' typewriter. "expression is the need of my soul," Archy declares, and at night-time, all alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Marquis' typewriter to produce a cockroach's-eye view of the world, full of insight, cynicism and humour. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; Archy is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter, so all his dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation.


Don Marquis, creator of Archy and Mehitabel, was a writer for the New York Evening Sun when he introduced Archy the cockroach in 1916 in his daily column, the Sun Dial.


Here is an extract of some of Archy's thoughts :


as a representative
of the insect world
i have often wondered
on what man bases his claims
to superiority
everything he knows he has had
to learn whereas we insects are born
knowing everything we need to know




one thing the human
bean never seems to
get into it is the
fact that humans
appear just as unnecessary to
cockroaches as cockroaches
do to humans


all the world shall come at
last to the multitudinous maws
of insects


a man thinks
he amounts to a lot
but to a mosquito
a man is
merely
something to eat

a louse i
used to know
told me that
millionaires and
bums tasted
about alike
to him
 
Cockroaches
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So step into a world that, until now you've only stepped on!
 
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