XOXO Skeleton

Epoxy emulsion on Fiberglass resin, Plaster

2023

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In his fourth solo exhibition with Richard Koh Fine Art, Faris Nakamura identifies this crucial need to allow insects as a species to be considered and reflected upon. As an avid carer of insects over the years, Nakamura pays tribute to the majesty of an insect form using his sculptures as a pseudo love-letter.

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​XOXO Skeleton is an exhibition that draws on the delicate yet resilient structures found in insect life as a metaphor for queer existence. It features ten works that explore the overlaps between insect and human frames and how queer bodies and lives move through the world: adapting, sheltering, transforming, and surviving. It positions the insect not as specimen, but as kin - the quiet, the persistent that thrives through camouflage, mimicry, metamorphosis, and unconventional beauty.​ 

 

​The exhibition proposes an expanded notion of entomology not as a biological field alone, but as a poetic, metaphorical terrain in which queer narratives can be nested. Insects, with their exoskeletons, iridescence, and intricate architectures, have long occupied the margins of fascination and discomfort, much like queer bodies in dominant social landscapes. In their capacity to both protect and expose, to morph and emerge, insects offer a potent visual and conceptual analogue for queer modes of being. By borrowing the structural logics of insect exoskeleton, and forest microhabitats, each work becomes a reflection on the act of becoming, of making oneself visible, or invisible, as an act of survival. These works extend beyond representation of queer resilience and embody the ability to carry softness inside hardness, to endure in hostile environments, and to find kinship in overlooked ecologies.