Where's Chloe?

Ok ... more old stuff.  I've just come across this piece from 1994 by Nina Katchadourian.  As you can see, it involves a stuffed lapdog on a pillow, but the story of the piece is what counts.

"A group of artists were invited to make sited works at the San Diego Museum of Natural History as part of inSITE '94. I kept coming back to the animal dioramas as my primary point of interest, because they seemed so full of paradoxes: the animals were shown "in the natural habitat," but the viewer always came unnaturally close to them; they were made of their real skins, but at the same time, they seemed dead and artificial. To me, pets have always presented interesting questions around the natural and the unnatural, I found myself wondering if people ever preserved domestic animals this way. It turned out that people did, and I found a taxidermist in the San Diego area who sometimes stuffed people's pets. Through her, I arranged to borrow Chloe, a Papillion lap dog, who belonged from an older woman who lived in Palm Springs (Chloe was at the taxidermist's for some cleaning and touch up). I interviewed Chloe's owner on the phone about Chloe's natural habitat: a house with a cream-colored carpet, a special pillow, and a peach-colored towel that Chloe slept on. I proposed setting up Chloe in the same manner as the other animals in the Natural History Museum: presented in a vitrine, with signage indicating Latin name, habitat, etc. The museum, however, refused to exhibit the piece, stating that it was offensive, and that people would find the situation confusing and that children might get upset. I pointed out that Chloe was genetically very much like the Coyote who lived in a nearby diorama, and that the Coyote didn't seem to upset or confuse anyone too much, but to no avail. The piece was booted out of the show. I was allowed to place the vitrine in the museum, sans, Chloe, and Chloe was displayed at a local gallery instead with the anecdote of how she came to be there."

And here's the picture of the display sans Chloe -- the vitrine in the middle with a bio on the pillow rather than Chloe. For more visit: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/confusinganimals/chloe.php

Update on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 03:15PM by ravishingbeasts

Holy shnockers, after posting that last piece, I came across an earlier piece by Nina Katchadourian that involved manipulating the boundaries of prey and predator. It didn't quite involve taxidermy, but something far stranger. The piece is called Animal Crossdressing - prey masquerades predator and predator becomes a big, fat rat.  Watch the video below and read the description of the piece here: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/confusinganimals/animalcrossdressing.php

Comments

[NM HONEY]

I think the video is wrong. I think the whole idea is wrong. simply for the fact the animals were ALIVE when they were used. Next time. Use the Roadkill. The entire thing was done so you can't see the animals. What a sad excuse of a waste of life.