Biophobia
Anonda Bell

Anonda Bell’s exhibition Biophobia features work inspired by when the artist first immigrated to the United States from Australia. “I found myself engaged in numerous conversations about all the deadly creatures that exist in my homeland,” Bell explains. “When I would attempt to explain to New Yorkers that Australians are overall more comfortable living with an assortment of creepy crawlies, I would be confronted by incredulous looks of dismay. It occurred to me that within a city like this one, there are very few moments when people are confronted by the natural environment.” There will be two works from the series shown – Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and Entomophobia (fear of insects). Each of the works attempts to convey a sense of fear about the specific creatures, even to those who do not naturally feel fear or repulsion.  

“Biophobia” is defined as a sense of dis-ease in nature, and a derisive regard for climates and environments which are not man made or at least modified significantly by people. It is thought to be an acquired urge to affiliate with technology, human artifacts, to the exclusion of experiencing the natural world outside a constructed environment. This condition is a seemingly inevitable consequence of growing up in an urban environment where our interactions with nature may be limited to incidental encounters, strictly mediated and moderated by the perspective of urban planners, or those who generate media content (and sometimes benefit from propagating a fear of nature).