Jess Bush

Since 2019, Bush has been developing and exhibiting her ongoing Bee Totem series. She collects dead honey bees from beekeepers, and preserves them in spheres of crystal resin and attaching fine jewellery chains. Her exhibitions collaborate with projection artists and sound designers to hang the many preserved bees at different heights to create shapes and experiences in three-dimensional space.[2]

For herself, Bee Totem is about recognizing and emphasizing the importance of the bees that, not only make the human world livable, but then "live by the thousands and die quietly by the thousands." The individual preserved bee in the sphere is amplified and magnified, showing its intelligence and beauty; it causes the observer to "pause and think about the moment that it died, because its frozen in that moment after its death, so its kind of like a memorial." The installation then amplifies "that impact of thousands dead at the same time".[2][3]

Having received several rounds of funding from the Australian Government by 2022,[3] In 2022, Bush described it as "the most significant work that [she's] ever made" with a goal of doing so "probably forever". She would like to build a cathedral for thousands of preserved bees, to allow people to quietly sit and reflect in the immensity of sacrifice.[2]