oliver bluebug
Oliver Bluebug is a nonbinary artist, born and raised in Connecticut. They attend Pratt Institute under the Communications Design program with a focus on Illustration.​
Oliver Bluebug believes in the importance of media analysis and art history. They take great care to engage with the world through a critical lens. Time is seen as a flat circle, and a common theme in their art is progressing forward by looking back through time. Using the past to inform the building of the future.
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Other interests of theirs are the Kingdom Hearts video game franchise and voice synthesizer technology found in Vocaloid and SynthV programs. A rather specific fixation is the fascination with the Frankenstein character, or the cultural trope of the artificially constructed person. This includes in narratives and in politics, as a queer symbol.
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why the bug?
The term bug is repurposed from a synonym of insect to an umbrella term that includes insects, arachnids, and various other small animals. The bug is not highlighted due to biology, but due to the innate disgust that is expressed onto it. The bug is a metaphor for neurodivergence and queerness, a figure that has violence performed against it solely for its own existence. The killing of the bug is not questioned in human society, but rather is encouraged for no reason other than convenience and perceived cleanliness. The fear of bugs is common, and rather than challenged it is baked into the treatment of insects and arachnids. The spider must be stepped on because somebody may be afraid, or find it gross. The transgender person must be oppressed because someone may not accept them, or find them contradictory to their world view. The bug is so widely despised that empathy towards them is seen as unorthodox and contrarian, just as empathy for the mentally disabled is not expected in the current neoliberal establishment.
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As a trans nonbinary autistic lesbian, Oliver Bluebug experiences innate disgust towards their person in everyday life. As such, they feel a kinship to the bug in how its treated, both by individuals and by institutions. Though, the parallels to the bug are not all negative.
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While humans make up a population of over eight billion, it does not begin to rival the population of bugs. There is an estimated 10 quintillion insects in the world, not even counting the arachnids. Despite the disgust, bugs will always persist and reproduce and live on despite the attempts to kill them on site. Queer folk will always exist in spite of attempts to push them back into the closet through mistreatment and discrimination. Neurodivergent people will always exist even with cultural pushes for masking and disguising of neurodivergent traits.
This is why Oliver Bluebug displays kinship to the bug with pride, both in identity and in name.