After realizing that his home was infested with termites, artist Ioannis Sicuya became fascinated with the similarities of how pests would invade wood and minutely destroy it fragment by fragment, eventually leaving it in ruins.

“Encroaching Behavior” dwells on the uncanny similarities of human behavior with the ways of termites: how they both facilitate the destruction of nature.

In this show, wood sculptures depicting colonies and settlements are presented to illustrate how, much like the termites, we carry the capacity to intrude over territories and then, wreak havoc to the environment as we impose our existence in our need to survive.

Incidentally, the agrarian lands near the artist’s home are also in the process of being converted to a residential subdivision, strengthening his evaluation of how humans are simply like termites in a larger scale--- admittedly, a disturbing realization.

As Sicuya pondered on this thought, he realized that these images are also charged with the resemblance of ancient ruins: remnants of people and civilizations long gone.

Therefore, depicting truths we have already seen in the past: demolitions made by our clamor for misplaced development through structures, as we claim territories, one after the other. And here is a lesson waiting to be learned: our entitlement to possession of nature becomes futile as the scientist, Robert M. Pyle, once said, "But make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last."

-Gwen Bautista