Peter Kuper introduces INterSECTS

Hi, I’m cartoonist Peter Kuper. 

The number of insects on planet Earth is roughly ten quintillion (that’s a ten with eighteen zeros after it). Insects are a part of everything we do in our daily lives: our diet, our economy, our very survival. Yet most of us barely notice their existence except to swat them away.

I began developing the art for INterSECTS in 2020 here at The New York Public Library as one of fifteen Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center Fellows. During the COVID-19 outbreak, however, interactions with the other fellows was constricted.

I found myself alone wandering the grand halls and magnificent rooms in the total absence of the visiting public who usually throng the building. But for me, this became a silver lining in a dark pandemic cloud. I already knew my fellowship work would involve insects. The building’s unprecedented vacantness allowed me to focus on its Beaux-Arts architectural details—and inspired me to populate the environment with the arthropods I’d set out to study. Ultimately, I decided to have these insects tell their own stories as they explored the Library’s treasures.

The work on view in this immersive installation is a small sampling from a developing graphic novel. The final book will span more than 400 million years of insects’ evolutionary history, and trace their life cycles through the modern era. It will also examine the various brilliant, often underappreciated entomologists and naturalists who studied the beauty and mystery of insect behavior throughout the preceding centuries.

I hope INterSECTS will give you a new appreciation of these tiny giants who have been kind enough to share this planet with us.