The female cabbage tree emperor moth (Bunaea alcinoe) is the size of a human hand. I saw one in 1992 in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, where the Vumba mountain range runs along the border with Mozambique; in the 1970s, ZANU guerrillas fighting for independence from white Rhodesia had hidden in the area. I snapped a shaky photo of the giant moth, beneath a dull outdoor light, with a pocket camera. I don’t know whether I still have the print, but it doesn’t matter. The image stayed with me. The moth was alone. Still. Unbothered. She seemed to own the night.
I remembered the moth when I visited the artist Felix Shumba at the International Studio and Curatorial Programme in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in March this year. Shumba, an artist from Zimbabwe, spent three months in the converted industrial space of the ISCP. Charcoal drawings hung on the walls. File folders were arranged on the floor in neat rows. Shumba had drawn oversized bugs on them in charcoal, including a moth.
