"I chose to respond to this intriguing creature in the museum’s collection for many reasons.

The death head moth is at once fragile, beautiful and a portent of danger. Its humanlike head leads it to be easily anthropomorphised and the list of metaphors associated with it are powerful, signifying among other things:

Life, Death, Birth

Looking back

The Soul of the dead

Seeker of light

An inferred omen

A spiritual messenger

As being resistant to death

A carrier of messages

A portent of doom

Mortality

The embodiment of the inevitability of change

Shift

Metamorphosis

Transformation

Rebirth

Liberation"

- Melanie Young