Artist Caroline Hayeur Films Nocturnal Insects at the Insectarium
The documentary photographer shifts her gaze from humans to animals to insects, building custom motion-triggered cameras for her latest trilogy installment.
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Caroline Hayeur has spent decades documenting human ritual — rave culture, communities, social bonds. But this spring, the photographer and visual artist made a significant turn: she spent a residency at the Montréal Insectarium filming insects that move only at night.
Hayeur obtained an artist residency at the Insectarium in 2025 and worked both in the Grand Vivarium and the institution's laboratory. "After exploring the lives of humans, then animals, I'm now moving into insects," she explained. "I'm going smaller and smaller."
This project forms the third part of what Hayeur calls her "infrared trilogy of the living" — following "Radioscopie du dormeur" (2021–2024) and "Un jardin la nuit" (2024–2025, co-created with D. Kimm). That second piece, which tracked nocturnal deer, raccoons, cats, foxes, and rabbits through video projected across four screens, will soon show at Espaces F in Matane from July 10 to August 23.
Night life has occupied Hayeur's practice for years — her project "Rituel festif: Portraits de la scène rave à Montréal" (1996–1997) captured nightclub culture. But noctivague insects — those that move only under cover of darkness — represent a new scale of inquiry.
For this work, Hayeur modified motion-triggered hunting cameras, working with a professional technician to adjust focal distance and automate the capture. She set each camera to trigger at 6 p.m. and run through the night, firing once every 15 or 30 seconds via an intervalometer. Every morning, she reviewed the overnight footage.
The results are haunting: giant hooded grasshoppers, four species of stick insects, chrysalises, butterflies emerging from their casings, leaf-cutter ants harvesting vegetation. "I filmed one species per week or every two weeks," she said. The butterfly emergences posed technical challenges, but Hayeur persisted.
The resulting images carry surrealist intensity — which feels fitting, given the Surrealists' own obsession with insects. The work will be presented in coming months.