Apocalyptic Time: Vegan Taxidermy, the Remains of Dolly the Sheep, and Bio-Engineered Art(ificiality) in the Time of Mass Species Extinction

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I complicate the ways that scientists and artists stage unique taxidermied animals. I look to what present-day taxidermy sculpture examples can teach us about human fears of extinction. Taxidermy has been repurposed in art galleries and is used to commemorate famous animals, such as ‘Dolly’, a cloned Finn Dorset sheep. I explore how taxidermy art can be used to theorize and think through anthropocentric apocalyptic time. In order to challenge artificial human notions of origins and ends, I place Dolly’s taxidermied remains in dialogue with Robert Marbury’s ‘vegan’ taxidermy sculpture of a woolly mammoth, made from discarded plush toys. Taxidermied Dolly (an animal that transcends ‘natural’ origins) and Marbury’s mammoth (a faux taxidermy piece that does not use real animal skin) blur boundaries – the real from the fake, the authentic from the gaff – and help us think through the temporal limits of human knowledge.