Fabian Peña

Using the most unlikely of materials—cockroaches—in his mixed media paintings and objects, Fabian Peña produces intricately crafted compositions, through which he explores life, death, the sublime, and our intimate connection to these omnipresent insects. Though he began working with the wings, antennae, and legs of cockroaches due to a lack of traditional materials in his native Cuba, he saw their potential early on, and eventually added flies to his palette. As he explains, “My grandfather would swat insects…and their squashed remains made an impression on me. Later on in my work, I began giving bugs the possibility of commenting on man’s existential condition after their death.” Human skulls and insect bodies recur throughout Peña’s work, formed from the subtly colored parts of creatures that have existed for millennia and that will outlast us.