16INTRODUCTIONBEYOND POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUEThe images from Deyrolle’s fire brought me to reconsider certain notions
of figuration and abstraction that had been central to early discussions
in the field of animal studies and art and the need to more carefully con-
sider certain representational issues that have thus far remained tan-
gled (fig. I.2). Therefore, this book focuses entirely on the tensions just
described—tensions pertaining to objects that employ realism in order
to problematize notions of realism itself; tensions characterized by
ambiguous approaches to figuration and abstraction, representation and
iconoclasm, livingness and death, and, most importantly, by the prepon-
derant value of materiality as an undeniable trace of what has been termed
naturecultures in contemporary art.^12
Despite the predominantly negative academic attention taxidermy has
garnered over the past twenty years or so, I argue that the new and often
uncanny presence of this medium in contemporary art can propose crit-
ically productive opportunities to rethink human/animal relations within
a broader context than the artistic itself. I am aware that, from an animal
studies perspective, this claim may sound at first controversial, if not
intrinsically oxymoronic. Yet, the framework of this book relies on the
refusal of generalizations and capitalizes on the analysis of specific ex-
amples in which taxidermy is adopted by artists as a deliberate destabi-
lizer of anthropocentrism rather than as a tool of affirmation of man’s
superiority over nature. Therefore, its central argument focuses on the
undeniable importance of representation in human/animal relations and
takes new iconographies of animals in art as an opportunity to think in-
side the gallery space about what happens outside its physical confines.
The methodological approach is therefore underlined by a political pro-
posal that links the current emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art
to the ontological derailments initiated by postimpressionist artists and
further explored by cubist, Dadaist, surrealist, neo-Dadaist, pop art, and
postmodernist aesthetics. What was extremely important and powerful
about these movements was their ability to connect the gallery space with
the outside world in ways that had never been previously explored. They
promoted modes of art making that nurtured criticality. Thus, by paying
attention to the emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art as a phe-
nomenon that inscribes much more than artistic trends and academic