featuring the work of Sujatro Ghosh, Julia Kissina, Corinna Theuring, Puck Verkade

Zoomorphism, the depiction of that which is human through the lens of that which is animal, is arguably as old as art itself.  The history of art furnishes us with many iconic examples. However, a standout one has to be Charles Le Brun’s Physiognomic Heads, those 17th-century drawings that to this day disturb us with their casual collision of form and psychology. This association of animalistic features with human psychological traits has become deeply encoded into our culture; we find it in children’s literature, in advertising, in Netflix fantasy series.  Some contemporary artists are, however taking Zoomorphism in another direction, rejecting simplistic psychologies and looking instead at the critical and political uses of Zoomorphic imagery.  This new exhibition at Jägerschere gives us a chance to look at what some of those possibilities are.

Sujatro Ghosh’s Cow Mask Project begins with the observation that cows in his native India are afforded significantly more legal protection than women. He worked with survivors of sexual violence to produce a series of photographs where women are anonymized by wearing cow masks.  The activist position of a work that asks “Is it safer to be a cow than a woman in India?“ eventually forced Ghosh into exile. Julia Kissina’s ink drawings depict strange social worlds where decades and species intermix. There’s a magical realism at play but the satire is barely concealed as men with seahorse bodies and women with fins gather together for an evening soiree. A member of the Moscow Conceptualist movement, her drawings are beguiling and unnerving in equal measure.  Corinna Theuring’s ceramics are similarly concerned with a social context but in the case of her Kuh oder Ziege?  sculpture the address is directed at the social pressures around body image and body shape that impact women as they enter middle age.  The choice between being skinny and starved like a goat or fat like a cow is presented as a zero-sum game of masking and coercion.  In Puck Verkade’s video installation issues around reproductive rights and self-determination are filtered thought the inner monologue of a pigeon-like bird attempting to construct a nest.  Asking herself “Are these questions and fears just the ticking of my biological clock?”  the bird’s reflections on maternity become especially resonant in the context of increasing anti-choice pressures on both sides of the Atlantic.  As with all the artists in this show, her deployment of animal forms is playful only in so far as it also deeply serious.

Contact: Nick Crowe, jaegerschere@gmail.com, 0157 5134 2755