Danielle Eaby-Lomas

Artist Catalogue

Virtual Exhibition

My name is Danielle Lillian Eaby-Lomas. I was born and raised in Cape Town. My practice forms part of sustainability praxis, bee activism and the theoretical field of care, empathy and vulnerability examining the artistic practice of beekeeping.

Having grown up with both my father and grandfather being beekeepers, I was naturally drawn to the t vocation and assumed a position of an apiary apprentice under my father. I quickly became aware and realized, not only through my work, but the growing awareness in recent years for the importance of these creatures, the necessity of promoting a more bee conscious culture and alternative beekeeping praxis. Through my relationship with the bees (more specifically Apis Mellifera Capensis) I have become more aware of the practices, the care and vulnerability that is necessary in these activities. I have developed empathy for their suffering as a result of climate change interrupting their food supply, pesticides, unethical commercial beekeeping needing improved management, and diseases like American Foulbrood (AFB) and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). As a result of these concerns, I have become very conscious of the way I handle them.

I have been labelled as somewhat of a “bee activist” because of my intentions, through my work, to promote a more bee conscious culture in the way we live, encouraging sustainable praxis to ensure the survival of these very important beings. I understand that the bee is an extremely complex creature which many people have different experiences or histories with. What I have chosen to investigate in my work, however, is my own relationship with them, recording my experience.

The impact I hope that my work will have is to encourage people to start thinking more about the importance and necessity of these creatures, which I believe to be sentient, and what a more bee-friendly lifestyle would look like. Incorporating things like finding alternative means of pest control outside of pesticides that are harmful to bees, buying locally produced and sourced honey which in turn also supports local beekeepers so that they may continue their work and not have to outsource, planting bee-friendly, indigenous flowers, and overall living a more environmentally and sustainable lifestyle. In doing so, this reduces the effects of climate change which impacts food availability for bees.

Rather than simply saving the bees we can learn from them, characterized by the “smell of selfless love”.