Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Film

Komolafe: born 2000 in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria
Park: born 1999 in Seoul, South Korea
Live in Los Angeles, CA

The 2021 film Winter Insect, Summer Flower, created by Gbenga Komolafe and Tee Park, follows a transgender woman through the seasons, and through repeating cycles of love, loss, fear, pain, and rebirth. Combining live action and computer-generated imagery, the work traces the protagonist’s evolving connection with her body, sexuality, and nature. A moth guides her through a barefoot journey from spring to summer that culminates in a rendezvous with her lover, and then slowly morphs into the grim loneliness of autumn. In the ensuing black-and-white imagery of winter, she washes away her sorrow with rain, emerging rejuvenated. Guided by the moth back to spring, her reconnection with the earth stimulates further flower growth, alluding to change, pleasure, and abundance as key elements in the film’s portrayal of transgender experiences.