Description: Giovanni Aloi maps the discourses and practices that have enabled the emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art. Speculative Taxidermy contextualizes the resilient presence of animal skin, bones, and feathers in gallery spaces, films, and fashion as a productive opportunity to rethink ethical and political stances in human-animal relationships.
Brief description: Giovanni Aloi (PhD, Visual Culture, Goldsmiths, University of London) is Lecturer in Visual Culture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of Art and Animals (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene (Columbia, 2018) and the founder and editor-in-chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.
Review Quotes: How did taxidermy become cool again? The recent and rapid rise of taxidermy in contemporary art reflects a broader shift in philosophical understandings of animals as embodiments of our shared physical vulnerability. Reading key examples through art and natural history, Speculative Taxidermy makes the case that aesthetic innovation follows from a sense of materiality as imposing a heightened register of realism, and with sweeping consequences for human-animal relations.--Susan McHugh, author of Animal Stories and Dog