Animal Magic: Sculpting Queer Encounters through Rogue Taxidermy Art

Abstract

Rogue taxidermy is a form of pop-surrealist art that fuses elements of traditional taxidermy with mixed media design. What differentiates this current pop-surrealist art movement from more traditional approaches to taxidermy are the ways in which these artists produce nonrealist and unconventional representations, while following an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the purposes of art. Analyzing Sarina Brewer’s sculpture “Something Up My Sleeve” (2012) that displays a taxidermy monkey-bird hybrid pulling an artificial phallus from a magician’s hat while facing a rabbit, this article looks at the political potential of rogue taxidermy to playfully disrupt normative structures of sexuality, gender, race, and species. I analyze Brewer’s sculpture for its ability to queer our affective engagements with taxidermy and, in doing so, argue that rogue taxidermy has the potential to disrupt the colonial encounter between spectator and (animal) art object.