Speculative Taxidermy

214THE ALLURE OF THE VENEER

along with the loss of individuality (the lack of heads) of both animals
and women that plays a pivotal role in the objectification/replaceability
in the politics of meat consumption. Simultaneously, the interweaving of
oppression between women and animals, Adams argues, relies on the
play of absent referents: a psychosocial detachment that separates the one
who consumes from what is being consumed, thus enabling consump-
tion.^60 In this specific place, these skins simultaneously embody multiple
registers of domestication, subjugation, exploitation, marginalization,
slavery, and consumption through the production of more than meta-
phorical incarnations. The tragic realism with which these manipulated
animal skins gesture toward vulnerability is as palpable here as it could
possibly be.

TAXIDERMY AND VULNERABILITY

Berlinde De Bruyckere’s modeled horsehides offer the opportunity to fur-
ther untangle speculative taxidermy’s ability to surface embodiments of
our shared physical vulnerability with animals. Unlike Galanin’s Inert
and Mntambo’s hollow skins, De Bruyckere’s animal bodies propose a de-
marcated three-dimensionality that further problematizes the notion of
affirmation in speculative taxidermy.
De Bruyckere began to work with horse skins in 2000, when she was
commissioned by the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres to produce art-
work with war as its core theme. The artist’s research in World War I ar-
chives unearthed many photographs of dead horses lying on the streets. It
is from these images inscribing loyalty, subjugation, love, exploitation,
companionship, and betrayal that her body of work developed. Like the
other taxidermy pieces discussed in this chapter, K36 (The Black Horse)
(2003) entices the viewer to solve an incomplete and inconclusive represen-
tational scenario in which multiple intertwined narratives, histories, and
human/animal relationships are inscribed in skins (figs. 6.6 and 6.7).
The manipulated animal form, like Mntambo’s cow skins, exceeds the
parameters of realistic figuration, capitalizing on the allure that emanates
from the clash between the realism of animal skin and the abstraction
of form. And like Mntambo’s hides, K36, in a more indirect way, evokes