Lifelong friendships begin in the halls of my high school, Bishop Strachan School. So many of my past classmates still amaze me with their wisdom, leadership and innovation in their fields. In addition to giving me the opportunity to be surrounded with so many admirable girls, BSS pushed me to be well rounded while giving me the space to be creative. A substantial proportion of my work ethic, how I express myself and my friends come from my roots at 298 Lonsdale Road. This is why I am so completely honoured to give an artist talk with Taylor Sullivan at the second BSS Alumnae Mentorship Program reception in the lovely Navillus Gallery.
BSS Connect! is the school’s mentorship programme, connecting Old Girls with one another so that we can achieve our biggest goals.
An endling is the last living individual animal of a species.
Human activity has caused many animal extinctions, and all we have left of these lost species are skeletons and broken up DNA. Today, however, scientists are discussing the moral and logistical reasons for resurrecting extinct species by using DNA information from museum specimens and advancements in genomic technology. This has inspired a range of visceral reactions, such as adult horror and childlike wonder. Animal resurrection is a unique and contemporary question we are facing- humans, the most intelligent species on earth, have the hard-earned power to make right what we have done wrong, and we are considering it now because we can feel regret and honour in our hearts.
When I was in Paris last summer, I visited the Museum of Evolution and saw a small exhibit about fluorite crystals. Fluorite crystals come in a wide range of colours, but when exposed to light they all gradually succumb to the UV radiation and turn clear, losing their bright colour. When an organism dies, one of the first things to disappear is also its colour, although colour pattern might still be preserved. It made me think of crystals living secret pure lives in hidden and fragile colours.
Around this time, I was reading a book by Linda Kalof, called “Looking at Animals in Human History”, which details a repetitive story of humans interpreting animals by anthropomorphizing them and using them as creatures of information rather than communication. When animals are exposed to humans, they gradually lose their ephemeral essence and way of life. I saw colourless crystal structures as a metaphor for our museum of skeletons and fragmented DNA- a basic blueprint of form but emptied of life.
In my new series, I grow crystals on a mirror and subsequently paint a thin portrait of an endling in greyscale. Although the animal is without colour, the viewer infuses his her own in the reflection of the mirror, breathing artificial life to the endling. The viewer can choose to focus vision on the animal itself, or on him or herself. You can see yourself in the mirror in the eyes of the endling, or you can look at the animal as its own being. This is Benjamin:
One of the candidates for de-extinction is the thylacine, a marsupial carnivore native to Tasmania. After occurrences of sheep attacks on the first European settlements, the Van Diemen’s Land Company and later the Tasmanian Government offered bounties for their bodies from mid to late 1800s. By 1933, the endling of the thylacine species was captured and brought to Hobart Zoo. His name was Benjamin and he lived for three years in a small fenced enclosure. On September 7th, 1936, locked out of his sheltered sleeping enclosure and unable to survive the extreme temperatures of the heat of day and cold of night, he unceremoniously died of neglect.
I am very much looking forward to my second solo exhibition with the beautiful Navillus Gallery, opening April 17th from 6-8pm!
Navillus will be exhibiting new pieces from The Replicators series as well as a couple of new and larger extensions from the Animal Citizens series. I am also really excited about a new series about de-extinction, Endlings. Leading up to the show, I will post these new pieces up here!
Details of the opening reception to come.
-Christie
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