A recent trip to the zoo left me unexpectedly distraught. I had expected a light and tumble journey, hanging out with the lions and bears, but instead felt a pang of heartbreak the whole time I was there. Watching the exotic creatures make do in their small, faux-habitats so the civilized could gawk at them seemed perverse. Plus, the animals seemed sad and lonely. There’s something unnatural about the way society has constructed our relationship with animals. I couldn’t quite figure out my sudden distaste, but the hangover stuck out for days.
It’s this accepted relationship between animal and beast that’s brought into question in Abject Nature. The strange and beautiful exhibit, on display now at the Union Gallery, is comprised of three works by Canadian contemporary artists Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby. Fusing taxidermy with video art, the works prod accepted truths, forcing others reconsider their perceptions.
Duke and Battersby teach at Syracuse University in New York. Partners in both work and love, they have been a team since 1994. Their work has won numerous awards in both North America and Europe. Their media range from printed matter, to installation work, to single-channel video.
In Abject Nature, the duo rigorously explore themes like the separation between man and beast. It evokes intense deliberations on the ways humanity’s been trained to create cohesion in a fragmented world—displaying troubles all our psyches have touched on in some way.
The video Beauty Plus Pity explores the relationships between adults, children, animals and God. The episodic film masks its profundity using saucy animations, sing-song folk melodies and a narrator that sounds oddly like an autotuned David Attenborough.
Duke and Battersby’s light-heartedness is a talent that allows their art to escape melodrama and resonate deeply.
At one point, the narrator addresses the irony of our relationship with animals. “Why is it not accepted to use drugs to calm their savagery in the same way we use drugs to calm our own savagery?” He muses. A statement that is fantastically simplistic yet rich.
Alongside Beauty Plus Pity, animals adorned in luxurious evening wear lie majestically in the installation Reanimating the Universe with Basic Breathing Exercises. Their deliberate arrangement can be missed at first, but it takes a mere moment to relax into Duke and Battersby’s realm. By placing man and animal side-by-side, the work challenges the accepted separation of man and beast.
The intensity of staring directly into a wild animal’s eyes is breathtakingly curious and frightening. Suddenly it becomes apparent how alien nature has become to us. Dressed to the nines, a gopher suddenly looks forlorn and a bobcat, wise—impeccably civilized especially compared to many Queen’s students who have been gallivanting around the Ghetto at 2 a.m. during frosh week. Are we really that different?
Beauty Plus Pity and Reanimating the Universe with Basic Breathing Exercises are tied neatly together by the third component of Abject Nature. In A Year in the Life of the World, a mesmerizing single channel video combines webcam footage from all over the world. Each webcam has been set up through an online database to watch the seasons passing through each corner of the earth. A year of footage was collected, synchronized, sped up, and arranged onto a new map of the world to offer a taste of its simultaneous unity and diversity. The work broadens the lens of the other themes explored in Abject Nature.
Vey Duke described her opinion of art’s purpose in an interview on CBC Radio as, “making people feel less alone”. While an unexpected trip to the zoo might not capture how intensely Duke and Battersby’s creations connect with their audience, it shows how liberating and comforting it’s to feel that others might wonder, doubt, and fantasize the way we do when we are stuck inside our own heads.
Abject Nature is on display at the Union Gallery until Oct. 8.
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