Cicada skin lampshade | 2023
The sound of cicadas shaped the summers of my childhood. On the island of Crete in Greece, I began noticing the delicate empty shells they left behind—hidden between branches, leaves, and the soft shade of trees. This is my first encounter with biological material
Driven by curiosity rather than formal methodology, I treated the cicada shells almost the way one approaches an intuitive exper
iment. I crushed them, soaked them, dried them under the sun—observing how their textures shifted with each process. Eventually, I cut the softened shells into patterns and sealed them in agar. They are all translucent, spreading over a mould and left to dry, making it into a lampshade.
Driven by curiosity rather than formal methodology, I treated the cicada shells almost the way one approaches an intuitive exper
iment. I crushed them, soaked them, dried them under the sun—observing how their textures shifted with each process. Eventually, I cut the softened shells into patterns and sealed them in agar. They are all translucent, spreading over a mould and left to dry, making it into a lampshade.
Materials: Cicada skins; Palm fibres; Agar.
