6. Taxidermy and Natural History Dioramas

Abstract

This chapter explores works that engage with the art and science of taxidermy and the construction of dioramas for museums of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While many artists have rejected taxidermy, given its association with cruelty toward animals, some have reclaimed the practice with the purpose of drawing attention to histories of animal objectification or rethinking human/animal relations. Recent recourses to taxidermy among Latin American artists have provided an opportunity to question of the exhibition practices of natural history museums, while exploring alternative ways of thinking about ecology and the environment. The projects I discuss in this chapter by Daniel Malva (Brazil), Adriana Bustos (Argentina), Rodrigo Arteaga (Chile), Walmor Corrêa (Brazil), and Pablo La Padula (Argentina) remediate, recycle or reuse taxidermy animals within new forms of diorama that construct a critical dialogue with Eurocentric conceptions of nature. They create “afterlives” for taxidermy animals that are held in tension between nature and culture or science and popular myth; they also demonstrate how taxidermy may—paradoxically—be deployed to restore animal agency and to create narratives that are less anthropocentric.