The Time Of The Butterfly

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“Only strong butterflies can fly in the storm of secrets”

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A world without butterflies would be a world without hope.

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Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross visited the Maidanek concentration camp in 1946. When she got to the children’s barracks, it was particularly sorrowful, with toys and shoes strewn about, but there was something else. The walls were covered with hundreds of butterflies, scratched, and etched with fingernails and pebbles. She said it took her 25 years of working with dying patients to understand what this meant fully.

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The children knew they would die and were leaving a message of hope; their bodies might not make it, but the butterflies represented their immortal souls. They would live on in a different form.

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“They knew that soon they would become butterflies. Once dead, they would be out of that hellish place. Not tortured anymore. Not separated from their families. Not sent to gas chambers. None of this gruesome life mattered anymore. Soon they would leave their bodies the way a butterfly leaves its cocoon. And I realised that was the message they wanted to leave for future generations. . . .It also provided the imagery that I would use for the rest of my career to explain the process of death and dying.” Elizabeth Kübler Ross

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This Exhibition is an exploration of the changing world order in the time of the Coronavirus.