Metamorphosis: Installation is a collection shaped through sustained attention
to memory, grief and the quiet transformations that unfold through repeated acts of folding.
Thousands of folded paper butterflies accumulate into fragile fields
where lived time becomes material form.
Through installation,
weather,
light,
and duration,
the work allows remembrance to become something that can be walked through.
Each encounter asks whether remembering might itself become an act of care.
metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
In-Situ Installation
2020
2,444 origami butterflies on wire stems
Outdoor site installation
Installed across open ground, Metamorphosis arranges 2,444 folded paper butterflies into a fragile field marking the passage of lived time. Each butterfly represents one week, translating personal duration into spatial form.
Seen collectively, the butterflies form a shifting landscape of fragile gestures. Wind lifts their wings, sunlight bleaches the paper, and rain stains the surface. These transformations are not damage but continuation. The installation does not attempt to preserve memory; it witnesses it.
Kaleidoscope – Installation Film
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 4 min 04 sec
Edition: 1/1
This film documents the unfolding of the butterfly field and reflects on the installation’s relationship to memory, ritual, and transformation. The movement of air through the field activates the folded forms, allowing the installation to shift between stillness and motion.
metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
Installation View
2020
Outdoor installation with 2,444 origami butterflies
metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
Installation View – Detail
2020
Folded paper butterflies arranged across open ground
FILM STUDIES
These experimental films reinterpret the installation through abstraction, fragmentation, and macro observation.
Fragmented Identity
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 2 min 30 sec
Edition: 1/1
Fragmented Identity reinterprets the Metamorphosis installation through experimental video techniques, including progressive saturation and desaturation, colour blooming, and fragmented visual sequences. The film explores what might be described as a “reversed metamorphosis,” where butterflies appear to unmake themselves, folding backwards through time.
Lingering Thoughts
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 4 min 05 sec
Edition: 1/1
Lingering Thoughts approaches the Metamorphosis installation through intimate macro observation. Rather than capturing the collective field of butterflies, the camera moves slowly across individual forms, revealing the material surfaces of folded paper as if they were landscapes.
PROCESS & INSTALLATION DOCUMENTATION
These film studies extend the visual language of the installation, isolating fragments of the butterfly field and translating the gestures of folding into moving image.
Installation Video
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 2 min 07 sec
Edition: 1/1
Installation footage shows translation from intimate studio practice to public memorial space. Wire stakes placed. Butterflies attached. The geometric pattern emerging gradually across grass. What begins as abstract plan becomes embodied experience – a field you can walk through, stand within, witness transforming under wind and light.
Highlights
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 4 min 27 sec
Edition: 1/1
Behind-the-scenes footage and interview captured on installation day, November 2, 2020 – the Day of the Dead. The artist speaks about the work’s development, the daily ritual of folding, the twelve emotional phases mapped through twelve butterfly designs, the mathematics of grieving made visible through 29,328 individual folds.
Project Archive
Artist Workbook
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Digital video
Duration: 6 min 15 sec
Edition: 1/1
The most comprehensive process documentation, revealing the repetitive labor, the accumulated hours, the physical demands of creating, conceptualizing, experimenting, and placing 2,444 individual forms into precise geometric arrangement. The film documents making as meditation, folding as ritual, repetition as method for transforming grief into material witness.
The camera captures hands folding paper. Twelve folds per butterfly. 2,444 butterflies. Each fold is deliberate attention. Each butterfly carries time. This is the daily practice of making and experimentation then making again, that sustained me through eleven months of making. Obsessive methodology as therapeutic discipline, craft as survival mechanism, accumulation as proof of endurance through unbearable time.
Published catalogue
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Author: Stephen Russell-Brett
76 pages
Published catalogue
Stephen Russell-Brett
Metamorphosis, 2020
Author: Stephen Russell-Brett
76 pages
COLLECTION NOTES
Metamorphosis explores memory through folding, repetition and accumulation.
Beginning with the simple gesture of folding one origami butterfly each week, the collection gradually expands into installations, photographs, films and artist books. Across these forms, repeated acts become material records of lived time.
Commenced: 2020
STATUS
→ Retained in the Artist Archive
→ Reserved for future retrospective exhibition
WORKS
• 2,444 individual butterflies
• Installation
• Photography
• Moving image
• Artist books
EXPLORE
→ Exhibition Enquiries
→ Publications
MATERIALS
Archival paper, Japanese folding techniques, handwritten texts, outdoor installation, archival pigment photography and moving image documentation.
METAMORPHOSIS: INSTALLATION
Metamorphosis began with a simple gesture: folding one origami butterfly for each week of my life. Over time, these individual acts accumulated into fragile fields where lived time became material form.
The installation gathers 2,444 folded butterflies into a landscape of remembrance. What begins as repetition becomes ritual. Each fold records a quiet act of attention, allowing memory to accumulate not as narrative but as presence.
Paper is central to the work’s language. Structured yet vulnerable, each folded sheet carries both precision and fragility. Influenced by the Japanese understanding of kami, where paper and spirit share a profound cultural relationship, the material is treated not as a neutral surface but as something capable of holding transformation itself.
Installed outdoors, the work remains open to weather, light and time. Rain stains the paper, sunlight softens its colour, and wind lifts the folded wings. These changes are not damage. They allow the installation to continue unfolding long after it has been made.
Rather than preserving memory against change, the work remains with it. The installation becomes an act of documentation as lament, holding fragile experience just long enough to be witnessed before it begins to disappear again.
Collection Legacy
Metamorphosis formed the foundation of Stephen Russell-Brett’s BA Honours in Visual Multimedia Arts (Cum Laude), completed at UNISA in 2025. The investigation also led to Metamorphosis of Memory: Unfolding Tomorrow’s Dialogue (2024), recipient of a Merit Award at the Luxembourg Art Prize.
Metamorphosis is part of Material Elegies, an ongoing practice exploring memory, transformation and the practice of attention through vulnerable materials.
CREDITS
Photography and videography:
Martin Short, Conrad Nel and Stephen Russell-Brett
© Stephen Russell-Brett, 2020
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