Zoologia Fantastica asks questions about the natural world

By Charlene Arsenault

About two years ago, Cristi Rinklin, an assistant professor in the Visual Arts Department at the College of the Holy Cross, approached artists Christine Baeumler and Kelli Scott Kelley with a proposal for a show. That contact was instigated by a dialogue she heard Baeumler and Kelley having in which they discussed disconnect and discomfort in the animal world.

Heavy stuff, and it's something both artists address in their work, which is strikingly different. They join five other artists in the exhibit Zoologia Fantastica, opening this week at the Cantor Art Gallery.

"After several long discussions with Baeumler and Kelley," says Rinklin, "I culled a group of artists whose work presented the animal as it is impacted and perceived by modern society, yet did so in ways that were richly fantastical. As the show took shape, I also began to observe that many of the exhibition's artists worked with vitrines, bell jars, display cases, clusters of objects reminiscent of curios, and imagery that recalled nature illustration. The entire show became a kind of cabinet of curiosities, inspired by the Wunderkammen that pre-dated natural history museums." 

The show is designed to address the aesthetic and ethical issues concerning the natural world, especially the animal kingdom. Baeumler's work tends to be inspired by ecological concerns, fueled by trips she's taken to World Heritage sites. She uses methods that recall antiquated natural history (Rinklin points out her piece "Darwin Table" as an example, which uses videos of animal species under glass bell jars). "Kelley, on the other hand," says Rinklin, "offers up a world that is born of a dystopian fantasy in which strange animal hybrids, inspired by the cuddly creatures of children's books and toys, inhabit dreamy landscapes. Kelley is interested in the contradictory way in which we distort animals into sweet images that delight children while we simultaneously treat them inhumanely and cause their extinction."

As the name implies, the exhibit pulls from concepts similar to Jorge Luis Borges's 1957 anthology called Manuel de Zoologia Fantastica ("Book of Imaginary Beings"), where Borges compiled descriptions of fauna from mythology, Poe, Homer, Shakespeare, C.S. Lewis, Kafka and Confucius. "[Director] Roger Hankins and I really went back and forth over several possible titles," says Rinklin, "and when I came across this book, of which I was not previously familiar, I became very excited. The exhibition is not meant to illustrate or describe the book."

The artists rounding out this exhibit are Boston-based Brian Burkhardt, New York's Catherine Chalmers, Boston's Mary Kenny and Amy Ross, as well as Minnesota sculptor Karl Unnasch. Chalmers offers a series of photographs of actual genetically engineered mice, Ross creates delicate watercolors of plant and animal hybrids, Unnasch turns road kill into a miniature world of its own and Burkhardt creates dioramas of "creatures that have not only adapted to, but have even absorbed the cast-offs of our consumption." Mary Kenny makes animations out of characters and sets that "depict the sometimes-violent yet darkly humorous circle of life between man and animal as both the hunter and the hunted."

"All this said," says Rinklin, "each artist leaves the viewer to contemplate the moral message, rather than drawing hard and fast conclusions about these issues." o