Pop Culture Meets Conservation: Richard Wilkinson's Creative Twist on Insect Awareness

Insects are undergoing a record-high loss in biodiversity today, with 20 percent of their species extinct in just a decade. Their image of being “menacing” and “disgusting” to people does not help these statistics. It has been proven repeatedly that people’s preference for “adorable” and “cute” animals has caused other species that look less appealing to fall behind in conservation efforts. Sadly, the animals that conservationists have forgotten, like insects, are often animals that are no less crucial to ecosystems when compared to more 'visually appealing' pandas and tigers.

British illustrator Richard Wilkinson is taking matters into his own hands by mixing disgraced insects with the mass appeal of pop culture. Influenced by 18th and 19th-century scientific illustrations, Wilkinson paints insects as if they have evolved to resemble iconic pop culture characters visually. In his world, there’s a Pikachu ladybug, a Storm Trooper beetle and even a No Face cicada. Wilkinson has illustrated these playful characters to raise people’s interest in the weird and wonderful lives of insects. A move that will raise the public’s awareness of their massive biodiversity loss so that anyone can take small yet meaningful actions to help push for insect conservation. This is why his pieces are relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Life on Land. 

Wilkinson first began this practice in 2016 to explore the collection and classification system employed during the golden age of Naturalism. This was a time period between 1865 - 1900 when leading European artists and scholars suggested that detailed realism, attempting to depict nature as it was, is a way to chart social conditions and human heredity. The overarching philosophical belief at the time was that nature and the environment around a person were an inescapable and essential force in shaping a person’s character. However, this led to an egoist view of nature, one where humanity’s perspectives are put front and center, as if everything in the natural world was made to serve a purpose for humankind.

In today’s age of posthumanist philosophy, where humanity is finally considering itself as a mere cog in the planet’s ecosphere, it is interesting to see how Wilkinson has appropriated the art style of this outdated and bygone era. His “scientific” illustrations are no longer made to catalogue or treat animals as if they are objects. Here, they embody a sort of macabre comedy, where an accurate depiction of nature is no longer of the essence but entrenching it with values society considers to be positive.

The insects in Wilkinson’s illustrations have undergone a fictional evolution. In order to survive, they acknowledge that they have to entertain human beings. They have transformed themselves into Pennywise the Clown, Darth Vader, and even Totoro to scream for society’s attention so that they can be saved from a mass extinction that very few have noticed and yet all will eventually come to feel.

Find out more about Richard Wilkinson’s cosplaying insects and their other initiatives by checking their Instagram on @richardwilkinsonart.