Taxidermied (2011)

The spaces that appear in my work are, in a sense, taxidermied spaces. They clearly retain the forms and appearances of places from the past, yet they have been stripped of life. Through the passage of time and the transformation of social structures, their original function has vanished. Though now abandoned and ignored by everyone, these places continue to exist. Once, they may have been sites of relentless operation, driven by the logic of “productivity,” perhaps even the workplace of a laborer who bore the weight of providing for a family. But now, they are nothing more than deserted factories—spaces that offer shelter only to wild animals. Other spaces that serve as subjects in my work must also have once held their own distinct values. And the process of their disappearance, too, would have had its own logic—its own inevitable reasons. Through the artist’s gaze, these reinterpreted spaces reveal the scars of an era— marks carved and scraped into them as they transitioned from their past into our present. “Perhaps this place, too, will someday become yet another abandoned factory left behind by the age to come.”