TAYLOR ORR

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Our disconnection to the natural world has heightened our sense of entitlement for the precious resources the world offers. As humans we feel the need to dominate and control animals with impunity. I pull inspiration and reference from both animal agricultural practices as well as my own lived experience with the treatment of animals within my vernacular. My fascination and desire to adorn these animal byproducts are a direct response from lived events having a partner who partakes in a hunting practice as a source of pleasure and for food. My lifestyle choice to not consume meat plays a role in my interest in how these practices unfold around me. Ethics, morality and environmental concerns are influencers that drive my practice with our cultures ever appalling desire to farm animals as a commodity. I am most interested in using the remnants or discarded byproducts of these industries.

My practice embodies a methodical mending that brings relevance and appreciation to the discarded through adorning the surface of animal skins or other animal materials. Carefully adorning animal skins reinforces the need to bring intrinsic value back into the animal for its history and life that holds an untold narrative. All materials I use are either sourced as discarded scraps, found at second-hand stores or have been given to me.  The attention given to a skin returns value and acknowledges importance after being diminished to an unwanted discarded scrap.

Beading and rhinestoning adorn the surface of these skins and discarded animal byproducts. Through embellishments, I seek to change the appalling and grotesque by subverting notions of adornment, creating something beautiful. I take these materials to create visceral wound or infection-like masses on the surface of the skin. This juxtaposition between beauty and grotesque is intended to make the viewer feel uncomfortable or conflicted, which will bring viewers back into their own skin.