Perforated Protection
Mysterious Worldwide Frog Extinctions

artist: Oscar Furbacken

scientists: Lee Berger, Danielle Wallace, Jamie Voyles.

This project aims to visually explore the amphibian tragedy caused by a tiny fungus that became the worst invasive disease of all time. The artworks are created by Swedish artist Oscar Furbacken in collaboration with Australian researchers Lee Berger, Danielle Wallace as well as Jamie Voyles.

In the 1970s, trade and globalisation  enabled  the tiny Bd-fungus to spread to new continents thus causing a global pandemic of skin disease among sensitive frogs, toads and salamanders. Since then 91 species have become extinct and still today many seriously endangered amphibians rely on conservation interventions to persist.

As mass deaths occurred unobserved in remote mountains, and the Bd-fungi are extremely small and transparent  it took decades before the mystery of frog declines  was finally solved in 1998.

Some of the art pieces utilize glass as a material to convey the fascinating ingenuity of the feared Bd-fungi. The ”floating” globe-clusters are designed to optically shrink the surrounding space like fish eye lenses, turning them into little microcosms.

During the artistic process we looked at the iconic gastric brooding frog and others extinct species but there was an image of a baby Southern Corroboree frog that really moved us. The wall projection at the back is a 1000:1 version of a scientific image from the little frog specimen, carefully documented by American researcher Jamie Voyles.

The perforation caused by fungi-tubes piercing the skin was especially visible on one front toe. It is this little toe that gave shape to the monolithic installation, here seemingly fossilized, hinting towards a timespans far beyond that of humanity. And as a memorial for the magnitude of this biodiversity loss, we find engraved at the back of the piece the names of each extinct amphibian species.